Envy
resentful emotion that “occurs when a person lacks another’s (perceived) superior quality, achievement or possession and wishes that the other lacked it”
Envy is an emotion which occurs when a person lacks another's quality, skill, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it. Envy can also refer to the wish for another person to lack something one already possesses so as to remove the equality of possession between both parties.
Aristotle defined envy as pain at the sight of another's good fortune, stirred by "those who have what we ought to have". Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness. The conditions under which envy occurs, how people deal with it, and whether it can inspire people to emulate those they envy remain as subjects of modern research.
Jealousy differs from envy in that jealousy is usually focused on emotional relationships and the fear of losing them, and envy is focused on a desire for other people's things or situations.
Types of envy
Some languages, such as Dutch, distinguish between "benign envy" (benijden in Dutch) and "malicious envy" (afgunst), pointing to the possibility that there are two subtypes of envy. Research shows that malicious envy is an unpleasant emotion that causes the envious person to want to bring down the better-off even at their own cost, while benign envy involves recognition of others being better-off, but causes the person to aspire to be as good. Benign envy is still a negative emotion in the sense that it feels unpleasant. According to researchers, benign envy can provide emulation, improvement motivation, positive thoughts about the other person, and admiration.
“Envy” enters the record as resentful emotion that “occurs when a person lacks another’s (perceived) superior quality, achievement or possession and wishes that the other lacked it”. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Envy, resentful and emotion can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Envy” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Envy, resentful and emotion provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q188739. The Library of Congress control number is sh85044217. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Envy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.