:: COMPARE ::
The short answer
Mitfreude is the word that actually exists. If you want German for sympathetic joy, this is it — in the dictionary, morphologically normal, and built exactly like Mitgefühl. Freudenfreude is what happens when a concept gets a name from the wrong language.
Side by side
| Aspect | Freudenfreude | Mitfreude |
|---|---|---|
| In DWDS | No entry | Full entry |
| Built as | Joy-joy | Joy-with |
| Origin | English | German |
| Citations in DWDS | None | Back to 1954 |
What each one means
Freudenfreude is an English coinage for the pleasure of being genuinely happy about someone else's good news, in circulation since the 1970s and widely known only since 2022 — and it is not a German word.
Full definition of Freudenfreude →The contrast above sets out how Mitfreude differs from Freudenfreude on the points that actually matter.