I hate it when people use the word "jealous", but they mean "envious"!

You're just jealous.

whats the difference again?

Main Entry: jeal·ous
Pronunciation: 'je-l&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English jelous, from Old French, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin zelosus, from Late Latin zelus zeal -- more at ZEAL
Date: 13th century
1 a : intolerant of rivalry or unfaithfulness b : disposed to suspect rivalry or unfaithfulness
2 : hostile toward a rival or one believed to enjoy an advantage
3 : vigilant in guarding a possession

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 13 March 2003 00:01 (twenty-three years ago)

This is a complete guess but is the difference that you are envious of your boss's Ferrari but jealous of the boss himself?

Main Entry: en·vi·ous
Pronunciation: 'en-vE-&s
Function: adjective
Date: 13th century
1 : feeling or showing envy
2 archaic a : EMULOUS b : ENVIABLE

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, 13 March 2003 00:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Dictionary - Thesaurus

Get the Top 10 Most Popular Sites for "perry"

9 entries found for perry.
Perry, Oliver Hazard. 1785-1819.

American naval officer who led the fleet that defeated the British in the Battle of Lake Erie (1813) during the War of 1812.

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Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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per·ry ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr)
n. pl. per·ries
A fermented, often effervescent beverage made from pears.

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[Middle English pere, from Old French pere, from Vulgar Latin *pirtum, from Latin pirum, pear.]

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Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
[Buy it]

Per·ry ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pr), Antoinette. 1888-1946.

American actress and director. The Antoinette Perry Awards, or Tony Awards, are named for her.

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Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
[Buy it]

Perry, Matthew Calbraith. 1794-1858.

American naval officer who opened diplomatic and trade relations between the United States and Japan (1854).

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Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
[Buy it]

perry

\Per"ry\, n. [OF. per['e], F. poir['e], fr. poire a pear, L. pirum. See Pear the fruit.] A fermented liquor made from pears; pear cider. --Mortimer.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

perry

\Per"ry\, n. A suddent squall. See Pirry. [Obs.]

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

perry

n : a fermented and often effervescent beverage made from juice of pears; similar in taste to hard cider

I don't know whether to be envious or jealous of all those definitions. Cheers!

Whoops. I just said I was jealous on the "quitting your job and living off savings" thread.

I think this might be a 'give up on it' job, man. Even well educated people seem to make no distinction anymore.

I hate it when people use "prone" when they mean "supine".

Skeleton vs. Luge: FITE!

I am jealous. All the time. Jealous jealous jealous. I'm not really ever particularly envious, though. Is this odd?

I hate it when people use the word "chalk" when they really mean "saddle".

I hate it when people use the word "hug" when they really mean "felch".

What about when they say "make love" instead of "do it like they do on the Discovery Channel"?

yeah that can be quite a shock to the system.

Yr "envious" of other people's stuff and "jealous" of your own.

nabisco please expand on your last point.

Nabisco's right, but jealous = envious is so common that I *hate* when people get pedantic about it. Sometimes you just substitute one for the other without thinking.

Sorry...I'm still a little peeved because some "English professor" pulled this on me on another board, and it was like, "I know that technically, but I'm conditioned to the more conventional use when conversing."

I think nabisco's getting at the definition of jealous as in "jealously guarding".

entry: jealous
Function: adjective
Definition: desirious
Synonyms: anxious, apprehensive, attentive, begrudging, covetous, demanding, doubting, emulous, ENVIOUS, ENVYING,

jeal·ous ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jls)
adj.

1. Fearful or wary of being supplanted; apprehensive of losing affection or position.
2.
1. Resentful or bitter in rivalry; ENVIOUS: jealous of the success of others.
2. Inclined to suspect rivalry.
3. Having to do with or arising from feelings of ENVY, apprehension, or bitterness: jealous thoughts.

I once told my mother that I have never been jealous, not even once, in my life, which is true because I don't really see the whole point of hostile rivalry against someone, and the only manner in which I guard anything is purely vigilant, which is a notch or two below jealousy.

She took it to mean that I have never been envious in my life, not even once, which of course is a total and hilarious fallacy. Of course I've been envious. Envy is the curse of the insecure and I feel it on a constant basis, especially when I'm doing nothing and am left to my own inner thoughts. But she seemed fairly happy to absorb the nugget of false information and so I'm not going to bother to clarify things for her.

Dude, Oops, there is a difference between prescriptive and descriptive usage. The dictionary you're cribbing from has rather sensibly just described the common usage of the word "jealous," and even despite that it's gone out of its way to link the sense of "envious" with the word "others." And as a side-note, don't ever imagine that just because two words are described as synonyms they must mean the same thing, especially usage-wise; this is language, not math.

Anyway, prescription versus descriptionwise the main thing you come to is that language and usage are never really "wrong" or "incorrect" in any deep sense -- the best distinctions you can make are between "standard" and "nonstandard" and then maybe beyond that "useful" and "not useful." The whole jealous / envious distinction is one that could actually be quite useful if we were all careful about it, but it's been almost totally muddled and abandoned and is therefore not so much of a big deal.

I say it'd be "useful" just because it distinguished between two very different things we currently tend to use one word to denote, and having more and more specific words tends to be a cool thing. Plus the best bit about the distinction is that if I remember right you can think about it using no less common a text than the Ten Commandments in King James translation.

(a) "for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." God clearly does not mean that he wants your stereo or thinks your girlfriend is hot. He means jealous in sense [1] of your definition; jealous as in protective, wary, and in extreme I suppose almost paranoid. Similarly a "jealous" husband does not secretly want to be his wife.

(b) "thy shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thy shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" -- here is something more like envy, although I think "envy" carries emotional connotations beyond the simple coveting. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife especially if he is a jealous man.

By pasting those dictionary/thesaurus entries I was trying to show that the usage of the two has gotten to the point where they are synonyms. Whether that is 'technically' correct or the way those words were used initially doesn't really matter. When someone uses it 'incorrectly' you're not confused by it, right? You know what they meant, so pointing out the 'mistake' seems like it's just a way to show how much more knowledgeified you are.

(btw, I agree with everything you wrote)

They are also not synonyms anyway, even by use. People might use 'envious' when they mean 'jealous' in the pure senses, but they wouldn't switch them the other way around. Everyone recognises a distinction there, but people have muddied one end of that separation, probably beyond recovery.