Freudenfreude
- “what is the opposite of schadenfreude”
- “is freudenfreude a real word”
- “happy for someone else's success word”
- “german word for shared joy”
:: COMPARE ::
FreudenfreudevsMitfreude
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 |
Which one you meant
Readers who land here meaning Freudenfreude rather than Mitfreude are usually searching for phrases like “what is the opposite of schadenfreude”, “is freudenfreude a real word”, “happy for someone else's success word”.
Where the confusion comes from
“Freudenfreude is the German word for being happy at another's happiness.”
It is not a German word at all. Query DWDS, the standard digital dictionary of German, and it answers plainly that the term is not in its present-day lexical sources. The real German item is Mitfreude, which it does carry with a proper definition and historical citations.
Read either one in full