SNP’s word of the day: Jalousie

Word: Jalousie

Meaning: Well, it’s the French word for jealousy, and everyone knows what that means. But there’s more…

Usage: “Il y a dans la jalousie plus d’amour-propre que d’amour,” said an idiomatic 17th-century nobleman, Francois de la Rochefoucauld. English? “In jealousy there is more of self-love than love.”

You should know it because: it’s so pretty, no? But jalousie also means something different than jealousy, the common English translation, and it’s an interesting something. According to Merriam-Webster, jalousie is more than that familiar feeling with which we can all identify. It also means window blind with horizontal slats. No, I swear. It may sounds unromantic, but it makes a creeping kind of sense when you imagine peering through blinds, unseen, at the object of your jealousy. Or, conversely: being jealous of the fancy lives hidden behind fancy blinds in fancy apartments. Merriam-Webster favours the latter explanation, but I like the former.

I wish I could remember where I first heard jalousie. I wasn’t reading Madame Bovary in the original French, trust that, nor had I heard of the 1957 novel La Jalousie—even though my beloved Vladimir Nabokov counted it as one of his favourites. It’s possible I was curious about the title of French fashion glossy Jalouse or, likelier still, wondering if the point of tabloid covers was really to make us jealous of the rich, beautiful, and famous.

If you ever require more proof that Hollywood is a giant, terrible, jealousy-inducing high school, just google, say, “Kristen Stewart jealous.” Poor girl has allegedly gotten a case of the green-eyes over Robert Pattinson‘s co-stars Emilie de Ravin and Emma Watson, his agent (“he is often pictured with her at events”—REALLY?), and now his new movie’s director’s daughter, Toronto’s own Caitlin Cronenberg. Ugh. It’s only our own jalousie, projecting our own verdant monsters onto closed blinds.

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