Other forms: jealousies
Jealousy is the fear of losing somebody you love to another person. Jealousy destroyed it, a fit of jealousy, professional jealousy.
It is often distinguished from envy: envy is wanting what somebody else has, and jealousy is fearing to lose what you have. In practice the two words are used interchangeably, and the distinction is worth knowing rather than insisting on. Professional jealousy is really envy. Note the green-eyed monster, Shakespeare's phrase for it in Othello, which is where a great deal of the English vocabulary of jealousy comes from.
1nounjealousyThe fear of losing somebody you love to another.
“Jealousy ended it long before anything else did.”
2nounresentmentResentment of somebody else's success.
“There was a good deal of professional jealousy in that department.”
jealousy is a feeling of threatened loss.
Old French jalousie comes from Latin zelosus, from Greek zelos, meaning zeal or ardour. Jealousy and zeal are the same word, which explains why jealousy in older texts sometimes means fierce protectiveness rather than suspicion.
Old French
jalousie
Middle English
jalousie
English, today
jealousy
From Middle English jalousie, from Old French jalousie, equivalent to jealous + -y. a doublet of jalousie. Related also to zeal, zealous. Displaced native Old English æfest and Old English nīþ.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA