Name That Emotion!

The English language has quite a few gaps, strange spaces where words should exist, but don't. There are lists of these words: here's one, and here's another with only a little overlap. Here's a third arranged in a nice infographic..  Some of these words have made the better class of English dictionary-- schadenfreude, of course, and l'esprit de l'escalier (the perfect rebuttal that comes to mind too late to be of any use); also schlemiel. (As distinguished from schlimazel: the schlemiel is the schmuck who dumps his drink onto someone's lap and the schlimazel owns the lap into which drinks are forever getting dumped. Ain't Yiddish grand?)

 Many of those missing words are emotional...which probably says something about English speakers not being as in touch with their emotions as speakers of other languages are. It certainly seems that way, surveying other cultures. Shameful admission: Arabic and Filipino (among other) grief seems so over-the-top to me that I find it almost impossible not to laugh at its expression. I hear that ululation and I can't help it. I just try to keep the snicker pointed inward and hope I'm wrong about the existence of Hell. Likewise, Italians, in general, seem overexcitable to me, while  (most) natives of Eastern European countries I've met strike me as dour, sullen and depressed. Then, of course, there's the Japanese: they have words for emotions English hasn't even thought of...but you'd never know it, because their public face keeps every emotion well hidden.

Even with these much-needed words, there are some gaps, and they, too, say something about our society. There is no real word for the opposite of envy. Check that link: none of the offered antonyms quite fit. When we say we "don't envy someone", we mean we pity them. But envy is wanting something someone else has. There's no word between wanting that thing and feeling pity they've got it. Does that point to a societal disinclination to be contented with what you've got? (Yes, "contentment" is listed as an antonym...I don't know about you, but I feel content, or not, in the absence of "stuff". My stuff, let alone other people's stuff, is...what's that thing that's not a pachyderm? Oh, yeah, irrelephant. Am I weird?

 I leave that as an exercise for the reader: I'll only note that a full HALF of the Christian ten commandments have something to do with envy or jealousy, either God's  (If you need any more proof that man created God rather than the other way around, look no further than the dozen-plus references to God as "jealous" and ask yourself: how can anything described as jealous love you unconditionally?)
Be that as it may, clearly envy is a common emotion...you'd think it'd have a well-defined opposite state.

Jealousy, too: no antonym, at least not one that's widely accepted and which covers every meaning of the word. (My two definitions, again: "wanting something that someone else has, such that they can't/don't have it any more"; or, more succinctly put, "pain at another's happiness".) The Kerista commune coined the term "compersion", but it only covers the opposite of sexual or romantic jealousy: it's "happiness at your partner's happiness with another". That's only one kind of jealousy, albeit a shockingly pervasive one. You can be jealous of success in matters other than love, and it's just as damaging. There's no word for the lack of that feeling, and there should be. Happiness at another's happiness is a sign of empathy...I just think there needs to be a better word for a state that should be the human default.

Also, I do wish people would differentiate between envy and jealousy: when I hear that someone is envious of me, I feel flattered, but if someone is jealous of me, I feel guilty and I want to give them whatever it was that made them feel that way.

Here are five brand-new emotions in search of a word to encapsulate them.  I must confess I have felt every one of these emotions before, That 'train wreck' mix of revulsion and compulsion definitely needs a name. Incidentally, so does the ridiculous (and again, ridiculously common) urge to actually slow down and stare at ACTUAL train or car wrecks. No revulsion there:, instead a sick kind of hunger: SHOW ME THE GORE! This emotion, which I grok as being in the same family as schadenfreude, is another one that convinces me I'm not really human.

I am also guilty of that gradual onset of online lassitude that sees Facebook statuses, forum comments, and occasional Breadbin entries get deleted because you know what? Even though I started out great gangbusters eight paragraphs ago, it has come to my attention that I simply don't care anym