You can envy someone without being jealous of them. But can you be jealous without feeling envy?

It’s a distinction that has puzzled English speakers for centuries. While the words “jealousy” and “envy” are often used interchangeably, they traditionally refer to two different emotions: one rooted in desire, the other in fear.

Put simply, envy is about wanting something someone else has. Maybe it’s your boss’ new car, the huge promotion your sister just got, or your partner’s seemingly endless vacation days. You don’t necessarily begrudge these people their good fortune — you might even be happy for them — but you wouldn’t mind some new wheels, a 25% raise, or unlimited PTO yourself.

Jealousy, on the other hand, is about protecting something you already have. It’s the uneasy feeling that someone — or something — might threaten a relationship, position, or possession you value dearly. If your spouse suddenly starts spending all their free time with a new work colleague, for example, you might feel jealous of the attention that other person is receiving.

One easy way to remember the distinction between jealousy and envy is to count the number of people involved. 

Envy is generally a two-person affair: There’s you, and there’s the person who has the thing you want. Jealousy, meanwhile, traditionally involves three parties: you, someone whose affection or attention you value (yes, your dog counts), and a perceived rival who threatens to take it away.

In other words, envy is the equivalent of saying, “I want what you have,” whereas jealousy could be boiled down to, “I’m afraid you’ll take what I have.”

But if the distinction is so straightforward, why do we so often use the words interchangeably? The way people have used the words over time has merged the two in the dictionary.

The origins of the two words offer some clues as to how their meanings became so intertwined.

“Envy” comes from the Latin invidia, meaning “envy or ill will,” which itself derives from invidere, meaning “to look at with hostility.” “Jealousy,” meanwhile, traces its roots through French to the Latin zelus, which comes from the Greek zēlos, a word associated with rivalry and competitive desire. That history helps explain why jealousy isn’t always romantic in nature; it can also refer to a fierce determination to protect something you believe belongs to you.

This is where things get complicated, as the supposedly clear-cut distinction between “jealousy” and “envy” has never been quite so straightforward in everyday usage.

According to Merriam-Webster, “jealous” can refer to both a fear of losing someone’s affection to a rival and resentment of another person’s advantages. In other words, saying you’re jealous of your boss’ new car isn’t necessarily incorrect, even if “envious” would be the more precise word.

The overlap is so deeply ingrained in the English language that even the color green has become associated with both emotions. In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago famously warns of jealousy as the “green-eyed monster.” Yet we’re just as likely to describe someone as being “green with envy.”

If you’re aiming for precision in your speech or writing, the distinction is simple: Use “envy” when you’re talking about something you wish you had, and “jealousy” when you’re worried about losing something that’s already yours.

But if you’ve been telling friends you’re jealous of their fabulous vacations or fancy new cars, there’s no need to correct yourself. Centuries of English usage — and the dictionary — are on your side.

As Halloween approaches, every night is a new opportunity to settle in with a scary movie or venture out to a haunted house. Whether you’re terrified by the witches, monsters, and general creepiness that comes in the dead of night, or you’re facing real-life fears and phobias, you might be shouting out, “I’m scared!” 

“To scare” and “to be scared” date back to the 12th century — and hundreds of years later, these words are still a part of the everyday lexicon, especially during this time of year. But if you’re looking for more creative ways to say you’re scared for this season of Halloween frights, these are some of our favorite, most artful ways to convey that fear. 

Though the primary meaning of “petrified” refers to a tree that has “converted into stone through a slow process of mineralization,” the secondary meaning is “feeling intense fear.” When you say you’re petrified, it communicates that you’re scared in a way that makes you freeze in place, much like a petrified tree. 

This is one of the many English idioms we owe to William Shakespeare. In Hamlet, the ghost of the prince’s father says he could tell a story that would make “each particular hair to stand on end, / like quills upon the fretful porpentine.” Hamlet spends the rest of the play in deep fear of making his next move, as afraid as the ghost told him to be. 

You might also say “the hair on the back of my neck stood up” as a way to communicate feeling scared. The back of the neck is sensitive, and if you feel like something is sneaking up on you, it might cause goosebumps. 

The expression “I’m shaking (or quaking) in my boots” produces an evocative image — one that’s been used in writing since the early 1800s. It usually refers to having to confront someone or something scary, but it might also conjure up an image of a cowboy in a standoff. The similar phrase “shaking like a leaf” produces an image of the same kind of fear.

The power of this statement lies in the bodily experience of fear. To make someone’s blood run cold is to terrify them. We also find this phrase in writing about haunted houses and ghosts. 

Similar to something that makes your blood run cold, something that chills you to the bone is so scary that it takes all the warmth away. Although it’s usually used in the context of literally being freezing, it comes up in a figurative sense to communicate fear as well. 

This phrase means that you have a negative or distressed feeling in general, but it encompasses feeling scared, too. If something doesn’t feel right generally, you might say you have a bad taste in your mouth because of the wrongness, which could be causing fear.   

The season of ghouls, monsters, vampires, witches, and more is upon us. While some folks embrace the spooky and scary vibes, others get enough of facing their fears every day. Shrieks and gasps of fright might accompany a scare, but there’s also a specific vocabulary that pairs with people’s greatest fears. The suffix “-phobia” is tacked onto mostly Greek root words to come up with language describing everything from a slight aversion to outright terror. It derives from the Greek word phobos (meaning “fear”) which itself comes from the name of the Greek god of panic and fear, in some cases specifically brought on by war. The Greek words for phobias are usually used for more severe levels of fear, sometimes even used as the name of medical maladies. However, English, always adapting and changing, sometimes pairs “-phobia” with an English word, such as “germaphobia,” for a lower level of aversion. 

If you know your Greek and Latin, you can even decipher the words for some of the most obscure fears. For example, arachibutyrophobia — from the Greek arachi (peanut) and the Latin butyrum (butter) — translates into a fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth. That may be more of an annoyance than a true phobia, but here we have the words for some of the most common phobias out there. 

“Acrophobia” refers to a fear of heights. Instead of Greek, etymologists trace this compound word to the Italian form acrofobia, dating back to the 1880s. In Greek and Latin, however, acro- does refer to something tall, like the Acropolis. 

You might look at this and think “fear of air travel,” but that’s a relatively recent evolution of the word. The original usage was a symptom of rabies: an unusual sensitivity to or fear of air. That context was more common in the 1800s.

This is probably one of the best-known fears: the fear of spiders. Given that spiders can be venomous, the fear of spiders is a smart evolutionary response. However, the aversion might also be rooted in ancient myth. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Arachne, a mortal weaver, challenged Minerva, the goddess of witchcraft and wisdom, to a weaving context. Arachne wove a tapestry of the many ways gods had punished mortals unfairly, and Minerva was so angry that she transformed Arachne into a spider. Thus Arachne’s weaving, while beautiful, would never be appreciated by the humans who feared her as a spider. 

Although a more recently named discovery, this is a common one all the same: a heightened fear of dogs. The first half of the word comes from the Greek word for “dog,” kýōn. We can find “cynophobia” in writing in the 19th century, but it became a medical condition documented by psychologists in 1998. With the official naming came more treatments related to desensitization and easing of the fear. The usage of this term as a diagnosis refers to people whose fear of dogs is debilitating to their daily life. 

Fear of public speaking, or glossophobia, is a major plotline of movies such as The Princess Diaries and The King’s Speech. The Greek word glossa means “tongue,” so the word is less literal than some of the other phobias on this list. 

Since it’s such a common fear, with a range in the levels of response, there are a variety of classes and strategies for dealing with glossophobia. You might take a public speaking class, or join an organization such as Toastmasters for more experience in conquering your glossophobia. 

“Germaphobe” might be used to refer to someone who uses hand sanitizer regularly in public, or to someone who ensures their kitchen and bathroom are always fastidiously clean, but the term “mysophobia” is an intense fear of contamination. A physician named William Hammond coined the term in 1879 in reference to a patient washing their hands excessively as a symptom of their obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

Mýsos is the Greek word for pollution or defilement. “Mysophobia” is used generally, but there are also terms such as “verminophobia” and “bacteriophobia” for more specific contamination fears.

Nyctophobia, fear of the dark, is more common in children, but even adults can experience some level of trepidation in dark environments. The word comes from the Greek nyx, meaning “night.” You might also see “scotophobia” to refer to a general fear of darkness, not just at night, but “nyctophobia” is still more dominant.

Indiana Jones is probably the most well-known ophidiophobe in pop culture: He’s afraid of snakes. “Ophidian” is an adjective that means “of, relating to, or resembling snakes,” so an ophidiophobe might be afraid of the animal but also any slithering noise or creepy wiggling scales. The wider term “herpetophobia” (from the Greek herpeton, meaning “creeping thing, reptile”) refers to a fear of reptiles, lizards, and other scaly beasts that fall under the same umbrella. 

Deriving from the Greek word trýpē (hole), this phobia is a recently recognized phenomenon. In the early 2000s, members of an online forum recognized that they shared a common fear of “clusters or repeating patterns of tightly packed small holes or bumps.” A notable example of a public reaction of trypophobia came when Apple released a model of the iPhone in 2019 with three lenses for the camera: People prone to trypophobia were intensely put off by the design. 

Sometimes all it takes is a single word to figure out where a person is from. For instance, if they say “soda” they might be from the Northeast, whereas someone who says “pop” is more likely to have grown up in the Midwest. Other regionalisms are less distinct, as they vary by just a single letter.

Such is the case with “wait in line” and “wait on line.” While the former is used by a majority of American English speakers, there’s a part of the country where the latter is far more common — in the Big Apple and its surrounding areas.

In most states, locals are likely to wait in line at the bank, an amusement park, or any other location where queues form. But as linguist Margaret Bryant noted in the 1962 work Current American Usage, the variation of “on line” was commonly used by people in the New York City area, and by folks north of the city throughout the Hudson Valley.

This isn’t to say that “on line” was or is exclusive to the NYC area. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence of “on line” appearing in print in publications in California and Texas, among others. But you are far more likely to hear a person say “on line” if you’re in New York City or the vicinity, and “in line” everywhere else.

But why? Well, there’s an urban legend that suggests this comes from Ellis Island. When immigrants were coming into the country through Ellis Island, they would stand atop and follow lines painted on the floor while they were waiting. That’s an interesting story, but it’s not likely the actual origin. The Ellis Island theory was discussed in an episode of “A Way With Words” podcast and the hosts brought up the idea that in the past painted lines were seen in many places where people gathered to line up, such as department stores and the post office. New York City, with its dense population, might have had more painted lines than other places. “On line” — seen in print going back at least 100 years — is almost certainly a regional linguistic quirk, akin to how New Yorkers say “on Long Island” instead of “in Long Island.” 

Another reason most of the country uses “in line” is to avoid confusion with the single word “online,” as in “related to the internet.” This certainly wasn’t the original reason, as both variants predate the internet by some time, but it helped cement the preference toward “in line.” 

Anecdotally, I was curious as to how our own editorial staff uses these phrases, because our team is composed of people who grew up all around the U.S. After polling my co-workers, I found that the regional divide held up. Team members who grew up in Pennsylvania, Florida, Southern California, Ohio, and Indiana all say “in line,” while the only other New York native and I say “on line.”

Linguistically, both options are considered to be acceptable. Just be careful using “in line” if you visit New York City — it may expose you as an out-of-towner.