Updated 2026-10-05
Eight words for feelings from German, or from German as English imagines it. Six are in Duden and used by German speakers, from Schadenfreude, searched 33,100 times a month in the US, to Waldeinsamkeit, which Duden marks as poetic. The last two, Freudenfreude and Glückschmerz, appear in no German dictionary. English speakers built both on the pattern of Schadenfreude, and they circulate on the same lists as the real words, so they are here with their badges. The real six run in pairs that share a scene: two about other people’s failures, two about going away, then two about wanting: one for something unnamed, one for no company at all. Each links to its full entry with audio.
The small lift when the car that sped past you on the shoulder turns up a mile later, pulled over, with a police car behind it.
The most searched German feeling word in the US, at 33,100 searches a month. German also has the adjective schadenfroh, so a person can be schadenfroh, gloating, as well as feel it. Its fake mirror image, Glückschmerz, closes this list.
The urge to cover your face when someone else embarrasses themselves and does not seem to notice.
The youngest real word here: German Wiktionary dates it to the 2000s, and Duden added it in 2009. It is a reflexive verb before it is a noun, so a German says er schämt sich fremd, he cringes for someone, rather than naming a feeling he has.
Standing at an airport departures board, reading out Windhoek and Montevideo, and aching to go somewhere you have never been.
Neuter, das Fernweh, like das Heimweh it was modelled on. One of two real words on this list with a named coiner and a year: Pückler-Muskau in 1835. Duden defines it through the next-but-one item, as Sehnsucht for distant places.
Refreshing a page of cheap flights at midnight with a full week of work ahead, wanting to be on any road but this one.
The only word here that English took whole: Merriam-Webster lists it lower-case, with no italics. In German it is feminine, die Wanderlust, because Lust is, and it mostly means wanting to go hiking. A German with the travel itch reaches for Fernweh instead.
Hearing a song from when you were sixteen in a supermarket aisle and wanting, badly, something you cannot name or get back.
The widest word on the list, wanting with no fixed object. Everyday German uses it for missing a person: Ich habe Sehnsucht nach dir. The second half reads as addiction to a modern German eye, though DWDS traces it to an old word for sickness.
Two hours past the last marked trail in a beech wood, the road noise gone and nobody since the car park, and glad of it.
The oldest coinage here, Ludwig Tieck's, from a fairy tale published in 1797. Duden marks it poetic and gives it one bar of five for frequency. It turns up on English lists of German words far more often than in German conversation.
Your friend texts that she passed the exam you failed last month, and after one sour second you are honestly glad for her.
Not German. English speakers built it on the pattern of Schadenfreude, and a New York Times article spread it in November 2022. The German word for being glad at a friend's news is Mitfreude, which Duden lists.
The sting when the coworker who coasted all year is called up at the holiday party to collect the bonus you wanted.
Also not German, and also made in English as a mirror of Schadenfreude: pain at someone's luck instead of pleasure at their loss. Correct German would add a linking s, Glücksschmerz. Psychologists have used it in research papers since 2014 anyway.