01 · Side by side

Side by side

Comparison sheet
AspectFirgunSchadenfreude
Their good newsDelights you—
Their bad news—Delights you
Native to its languageNoYes
Borrowed fromYiddishGerman
02 · Which one you meant

Which one did you mean?

In shortReaders who land here meaning Firgun rather than Schadenfreude are usually searching for phrases like “hebrew word for being happy for someone”, “firgun meaning”, “opposite of schadenfreude hebrew”.

Firgun

  • “hebrew word for being happy for someone”
  • “firgun meaning”
  • “opposite of schadenfreude hebrew”
  • “genuine joy at someone else's success”

Schadenfreude

  • “what is the word for enjoying someone's downfall”
  • “schadenfreude meaning”
  • “is schadenfreude bad”
  • “why do I enjoy other people's failure”
03 · Which came first

Which came first

In shortFirgun. 1970s — Firgun and the verb lefargen enter Hebrew as slang and spread over the following decades.

  1. 1970s

    Firgun. Firgun and the verb lefargen enter Hebrew as slang and spread over the following decades.

  2. 2019–2020

    Schadenfreude. Wang, Lilienfeld and Rochat's tripartite motivational model — Aggression, Rivalry, Justice — becomes one of the influential breakdowns, summarised alongside a rival four-type model in a 2020 Frontiers in Psychology study of schadenfreude on social media.

04 · Read either one

Read either one in full