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by wyclif·17y ago·view on hn ↗
You mean envy, not jealousy:

Ordinary language tends to conflate envy and jealousy. The philosophical consensus is that these are distinct emotions.[2] While it is linguistically acceptable to say that one is jealous upon hearing about another's vacation, say, it has been plausibly argued that one is feeling envy, if either, in such a case. Both envy and jealousy are three-place relations; but this superficial similarity conceals an important difference. Jealousy involves three parties, the subject, the rival, and the beloved; and the jealous person's real locus of concern is the beloved—the person whose affection he is losing or fears losing—not his rival. Whereas envy is a two party relation, with a third relatum that is a good (albeit a good that could be a particular person's affections); and the envious person's locus of concern is the rival.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/envy/

1 comments
I like that definition, but dictionaries often make a less clear distinction, and put envy as a more powerful emotion.

(try dictionary.com, for instance, but my print ones also concur)