Friday, April 11, 2014

A-to-Z Challenge: Jealous

Ah, J. My favorite letter, obviously.


Feeling jealous?

Jealous first showed up in the early thirteenth century as gelus, then a century later, as jelus. It comes from the Late Latin zelosus/zelus, meaning zeal (and before you ask, yes, that’s zeal’s origin word, too). The Roman tongue took zelus (along with many other things) from the Greek zelos, same meaning. Further back from that, no one knows.

Insert mysterious music here.

Sources

18 comments:

  1. Interesting that jealous and zealous have the same origin.I think of a jealous as a negative emotion while zealous a positive one. Of course a zealous person could quickly become jealous if her objective is to win a contest.
    The View from the Top of the Ladder

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  2. Interesting they took on two totally different meanings.

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  3. Mysterious music, indeed.

    Very cool about the jealous/zealous thing.

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  4. I can see how Zealous and Jealous could be related. :)

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  5. I might be inclined to put zealous in more of a negative light than a positive, but both jealous and zealous imply a certain intensity to the feeling.

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  6. Hello J.E.: as is obvious from all of the comments so far, your adoring public (including me!) is demanding more information about the zealous/jealous split. When and how did the two words start to assume such different identities? I don't think that "zeal" has any current negative connotations (although "zealot" certainly does). Please help us, O Great Etymology Queen! And don't make us wait for enlightenment until you get to Z!

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  7. Zealous and Jealous coming from the same origin doesn't surprise me. I find both of them to have a somewhat negative connotations. Jealousy can lead to some very violent things. As can someone being zealous, because I'm betting zealot can be traced with zealous too.

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  8. Jealous: one of the most misused words in American English.

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  9. I think zealous can have negative aspects to it. People who are overly zealous are never popular. Maybe because everyone is jealous of their energy....

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  10. Alas, I really can't give more information on why zealous and jealous became two different words. However, the Old French (from which English took many words) word jalos could mean both jealous AND zealous. Perhaps people started saying it with a j when it meant one thing and a z when it meant the other.

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  11. This is the second post in a row that's content was "jealous".

    Bloggers are very zealous for the word jealous on J day!

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  12. I would have never guessed the two words came from the same origination. Interesting. I am now a follower to your blog, thanks to A to Z!
    Deb@ http://debioneille.blogspot.com

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  13. Visiting from A/Z; great theme you have for the challenge; always good to learn the meanings of words; I did learn something today by visiting your blog with the roots of jealous/zealous.

    Good luck with the rest of the challenge!

    betty

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  14. Okay, can I now spell it gelus? That I can spell. The other I always mess up and have to have spellcheck fix.

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  15. I'm glad it's from zeal, and no jealousy!

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  16. We totally did have the same brain wave today :) what a cool origin - and you're right, it DOES make sense that jealous and zealous would have the same root! Zelos also makes me think of Zeus, which also sort of makes sense...

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  17. I always wondered if jealous and zealous were related.

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  18. I never knew that jealousy has it's roots in Latin. That was interesting.

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Please validate me.