BlackBook Magazine

To word-watchers, this May 1 blog comment is a sign of the times:

Schadenfreude: satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else’s misfortune.
Clintonfreude: satisfaction or pleasure felt at Hillary’s comeuppance.

Then again, Hillaryfreude may better name your sadistic joy at the death throes of the former First Lady’s campaign—unless your heart is filled with Obamafreude, over the Illinois Senator’s protracted preacher problems. Or maybe you’re bathing in Spitzenfreude, Shaqenfreude, or Spearsenfreude, as you luxuriate in the declining fortunes of Eliot Spitzer, Shaquille O’Neal, or Britney Spears.

These clever, Germanesque, all-too-real words are part of a trend that’s been around for a few years but is taking on new prominence: increased use of “-(en)freude” as a suffix.

It all started with Schadenfreude, a word bringing together the German terms for harm and joy that the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “Malicious enjoyment of the misfortunes of others.” Schadenfreude is at least as old as 1852, but may have been born for the blogosphere, where harm-propelled joy is more than just a compelling concept—it’s a full-time, 20-posts-a-day occupation.

The success of -(en)freude is an example of what linguists call “cranberry morphemes"—or cran-morphs for short. There was no cran before cranberry, but that little syllable grew up to become shorthand for cranberry in words like cran-apple and cran-grape. The same process helped delicious, fantastic, spectacular, lollapalooza, momentum, and Watergate spawn bootylicious, craptastic, Pope-tacular, Oprah-palooza, Obama-mentum, and Monicagate. Ben Zimmer, Executive Producer of the Visual Thesaurus, says -(en)freude words are formed by “basically the same process as the -tastic/-tacular variety of neologization, with the added zing of foreignness.”

Foreign zing plus election year is a marriage made in blog heaven, where hordes of partisan nyah-nyahers have felt the Bushenfreude, Huckenfreude, Frankenfreude, Giulianenfreude, and Mittenfreude. But not all -(en)freude words have been political, and there’s plenty of sadism to go around. Delight in Tom Cruise’s cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffness has taken the form of Tomenfreude and Cruisenfreude. Much-loathed Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have generated Spearsenfreude and Hiltonfreude, while a Montreal Mirror sex columnist discusses the conjugal horror that is shagenfreude. One creative blogger turned the trend on its head with this odd coinage: “Yesterday, it was ‘selfenfreude’ that got me through the day. If you can’t laugh at yourself...”

Though the second half of Schadenfreude is more prolific, Schadengoogling and Schadenblogging have been spotted too. Much like critters, words go through a Darwinian struggle for survival, and the success of -(en)freude over Schaden is reminiscent of an older, more scandalous word trend. We’re overfamiliar with words such as Iran-Contragate and Plamegate, but the first half of the most famous scandal in American history did inspire some short-lived ‘70s-era words, including Waterbungler, Watergoof, Watergaffe, and Waterfallout, before -gate proved to be a sturdier word-maker.

Though prolific, -(en)freude is no -gate yet, and time will tell if this mean-spirited suffix is as enduring as meanspiritedness itself. But as long as blogs remain mercy-free zones of giddy wordplay, there will likely be blogenfreude aplenty.