Jealous vs Envious

Sam: Which country on the Planet is most hated?

Pat: I don't know, which?

Sam: The United States. Which country do most people list as the most desirable place on the planet to live?

Pat: I don't know, which?

Sam: The United States.

Pat: How can that be?

Sam: Obviously they're.....(envious or jealous??)

Which option would you choose to complete the above dialogue??
Well, the correct answer is that you may actually use both! This is the exact point of my post today!The use of these 2 words really caught my attention once, so that's why I was keen on making a comment about them. Hope you find this helpful and interesting!

To my surprise, I heard that many times natives tend to use the word jealous in the same contexts in which we may have expected the use of the word envious instead .I looked them up in the dictionary to find out in what they differ. Then the meanings I found are the following:

Jealous ( of sb/sth ): feeling angry or unhappy because you wished you had sth sb else has ( Oxford Dictionary )
Eg: she’s jealous of my success
Children often feel jealous when a new baby arrives
Envious ( of sb/sth ) : wanting to be in the same situation as sb else ; wanting sth that sb else has. ( Oxford Dictionary )
Eg : they were envious of his success.
everyone is so envious of her.

.... Still, you may wonder then what the difference between them is. Even though their meaning, as you see, is very similar , we may even say they are synonyms, I ‘ve noticed that they mainly differ in the fact that jealous can also be used in a positive way. Jealous would then be like our “envidia sana “ . Check out these example that’ll help grasp this meaning of jealous:

Your hair looks shiny and smooth, I’m so jealous!
I’m so jealous you had the chance to travel all around the world! You ‘re just so lucky!

In addition to this meaning, jealous also means “being threatened by a rival in a romantic relationship or losing something of value to another person which happens to be yours already “,according to the urban dictionary. Certainly, this meaning is not shared with envious. An example of jealous in this sense would be :

She was really jealous of his boyfriend’s gilrfriends.


To sum up, jealous and envious can be used interchangeably when the meaning is negative and when it implies “feeling hatred/bitterness towards another person for having an advantage that YOU don't have(urban dictionary)”. Though when we mean we like or want something we lack, in a positive, friendly-like way, or when such a feeling is connected with a love relationship, feeling hate or bitterness towards others we may consider rivals, in any case, the term we use is jealous and NOT envious.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jealous