Definition of envy

"envy" in the noun sense

1. envy, enviousness

a feeling of grudging admiration and desire to have something that is possessed by another

2. envy, invidia

spite and resentment at seeing the success of another (personified as one of the deadly sins)

"envy" in the verb sense

1. envy

feel envious towards admire enviously

2. envy, begrudge

be envious of set one's heart on

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

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Quotations for envy

Envy apart.

Pity cures envy. [ Proverb ]

Envy aims very high. [ Ovid ]

To emulate is to envy. [ Lessing ]

Merit challenges envy. [ Dryden ]

Even lust and envy sleep. [ Dryden ]

Envy is a kind of praise. [ Gay ]

Love and envy make a man pine. [ Proverb ]

Envy feeds only on the living. [ Ovid ]

Envy never yet enriched any man. [ Proverb ]

Envy, like flame, soars upwards. [ Livy ]

Nothing sharpens sight like envy. [ Proverb ]

Virtue is not secure against envy. [ Proverb ]

Rivalry and envy are Siamese twins. [ H. W. Shaw ]

One common fate we both must prove;
You die with envy, I with love. [ Gay ]

Better my enemy envy me, than I him. [ Proverb ]

All envy is proportionate to desire. [ Dr. Johnson ]

The envious will die, but envy never. [ Moliere ]

I envy none the gilding of their woe. [ Young ]

Better it is to be envied than pitied. [ Herodotus ]

Envy is ashamed and afraid to be seen. [ Proverb ]

For envy, to small minds, is flattery. [ Young ]

Genius involves both envy and calumny. [ Pope ]

Envy is the antagonist of the fortunate. [ Epictetus ]

Vile is the vengeance on the ashes cold,
And envy base to bark at sleeping fame. [ Spenser ]

Envy is more irreconcilable than hatred. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Envy is not to be conquered but by death. [ Horace ]

The man that makes a character makes foes. [ Young ]

He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below. [ Byron ]

Envy and covetousness are never satisfied. [ Proverb ]

Base envy withers at another's joy,
And hates that excellence it cannot reach. [ Thomson ]

Envy shoots at others, and wounds herself. [ Proverb ]

Humility disarms envy and strikes it dead. [ Collier ]

Love thinks nae ill, envy speaks nae gude. [ Scotch Proverb ]

With fame, in just proportion, envy grows. [ Young ]

Friends I have made, whom envy must commend.
But not one foe whom I would wish a friend. [ Churchill ]

Rust consumes iron, and envy consumes itself. [ Danish Proverb ]

As love thinks no evil, so envy speaks no good. [ Proverb ]

Those who raise envy will easily incur censure. [ Churchill ]

O happiness of blindness! now no beauty
Inflames my lust; no other's goods my envy,
Or misery my pity; no man's wealth
Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn,
Yet still I see enough! man to himself
Is a large prospect, raised above the level
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within myself, that world shall be
My empire; there I'll reign, commanding freely,
And willingly obeyed, secure from fear
Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons. [ Denham ]

Great honours are great burdens; but on whom
They're cast with envy, he doth bear two loads. [ Ben Jonson ]

Greatness envy not; for thou mak'st thereby
Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater. [ Herbert ]

Envy and Idleness married together begot Curiosity. [ Proverb ]

Emulation is active virtue; envy is brooding malice. [ Ouida ]

To envy anybody is to confess ourselves his inferior. [ Mlle. de Lespinasse ]

All fame is dangerous: good, brings Envy; bad, shame. [ Proverb ]

To feel envy is human; to joy in mischief is devilish. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Emulation is lively and generous, envy base and .malicious. [ Proverb ]

Worth begets in base minds envy; in great souls, emulation. [ Fielding ]

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope. [ Henry Wheeler Shaw (pen name Josh Billings) ]

Death openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy. [ Bacon ]

Envy is blind, and can only disparage the virtues of others. [ Livy ]

An envious man waxeth lean with the fatness of his neighbors. [ Socrates ]

Worth begets in base minds envy, but in brave souls emulation. [ Proverb ]

Emulation embalms the dead; envy, the vampire, blasts the living. [ Fuseli ]

Power is seldom innocent, and envy is the yokefellow of eminence. [ Tupper ]

Ambition hath but two steps; the lowest, blood; the highest, envy. [ Lilly ]

Envy hath a leer of her father the devil, but cruelty his very face. [ Proverb ]

There is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy. [ Sheridan ]

Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart like a viper in its hole. [ Balzac ]

Men that make envy and crooked malice nourishment, dare bite the best. [ William Shakespeare ]

Pride, which inspires us with so much envy, serves also to moderate it. [ Rochefoucauld ]

I envy no man that knows more than my self, but pity them that know less. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

How can we explain the perpetuity of envy - a vice which yields no return? [ Balzac ]

How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes! [ William Shakespeare ]

Envy, like flame, blackens that which is above it, and which it cannot reach. [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Rising glory occasions the greatest envy, as kindling fire the greatest smoke. [ Spenser ]

Envy lies between two beings equal in nature, though unequal in circumstances. [ Jeremy Collier ]

Envy, to which the ignoble mind's a slave, is emulation in the learned or brave. [ Pope ]

Why will you break the Sabbath of my days? Now sick alike of envy and of praise. [ Pope ]

Stinging envy is more merciful to good things that are old than such as are new. [ Phaedr ]

Envy is like a fly that passes all a body's sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores. [ Chapman ]

Hatred is active, and envy passive, disgust; there is but one step from envy to hate. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice. [ Balzac ]

Envy is so shameful and cowardly a passion, that nobody ever had the confidence to own it. [ Proverb ]

The hate which we all bear with the most Christian patience is the hate of those who envy us. [ Colton ]

Too much magnifying of man or matter doth irritate contradiction, and procure envy and scorn. [ Bacon ]

The upright must suffer hatred and envy. It enhances the worth of a man if hatred pursues him. [ Gottfried von Strassburg ]

Nevertheless, even envy, however unwilling, will have to admit that I have lived among great men. [ Horace ]

That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own. [ Swift ]

Who loves the golden mean is safe from the poverty of a tenement, is free from the envy of a palace. [ Horace ]

He that would live clear of envy must lay his finger on his mouth, and keep his hand out of the inkpot. [ L'Estrange ]

Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy. [ Balzac ]

Envy sets the stronger seal on desert; if he have no enemies, I should esteem his fortune most wretched. [ Ben Jonson ]

By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy. [ Bancroft ]

The praise we give to new comers into the world arises from the envy we bear to those who are established. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

When malice is joined to envy, there is given forth poisonous and feculent matter, as ink from the cuttle-fish. [ Plutarch ]

No reports are more readily believed than those which disparage genius and soothe envy of conscious mediocrity. [ Macaulay ]

A ring is a circle of vanity, worn on the finger to show off your wealth, and excite the envy of your neighbor. [ E. P. Day ]

We see how much a man has, and therefore we envy him; did we see how little he enjoys, we should rather pity him. [ Seed ]

If we did but know how little some enjoy the great things that they possess, there would not be much envy in the world. [ Young ]

Now-a-days friends are no longer found; good faith is dead, envy reigns supreme; and evil habits are ever more extending. [ Sannazaro ]

I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm. [ William Shakespeare ]

Unsuccessful emulation is too apt to sink into envy, which of all sins has not even the excuse to offer of temporary gratification. [ Sydney Dobell ]

The wine-shops breed, in physical atmosphere of malaria and a moral pestilence of envy and vengeance, the men of crime and revolution. [ Charles Dickens ]

Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtues of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes or envy struck dumb. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exert herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes, that she may have another by a defeat. [ Colton ]

We are told to walk noiselessly through the world, that we may waken neither hatred nor envy; but, alas! what can we do when they never sleep! [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Revenge, which, like envy, is an instinct of justice, does but take into its own hands the execution of that natural law which precedes the social. [ Chatfield ]

The lightsome countenance of a friend giveth such an inward decking to the house where it iodgeth, as proudest palaces have cause to envy the gilding. [ Sir Philip Sidney ]

These men (chronic fault-finders) should consider that it is their envy which deforms everything, and that the ugliness is not in the object, but in the eye. [ Steele ]

Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it; it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand. [ Sterne ]

With vivid words your just conceptions grace. Much truth compressing in a narrow space; Then many shall peruse, but few complain, And envy frown, and critics snarl in vain. [ Pindar ]

Does the man live who has not felt this spur to action, in a more or less generous spirit? Emulation lives so near to envy that it is sometimes difficult to establish the boundary-lines. [ Henry Giles ]

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy: the smile that accepts the lover before the words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby, and assures it of a mother's love. [ Haliburton ]

A woman whose great beauty eclipses all others is seen with as many different eyes as there are people who look at her. Pretty women gaze with envy, homely women with spite, old men with regret, young men with transport. [ D'Argens ]

Worldly ambition is founded on pride or envy, but emulation, or laudable ambition, is actually founded in humility; for it evidently implies that we have a low opinion of our present attainments, and think it necessary to be advanced. [ Bishop Hall ]

Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor, and conscience, to obtain them: it is to pay so dear for them that the bargain is a loss. [ Bruyere ]

Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him. [ Thomas Hobbes ]

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire forsake me: when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I reflect how vain it is to grieve for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I behold rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. [ Addison ]

envy in Scrabble®

The word envy is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 10

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Play In The Letters envy:

ENVY
(42)
 

All Scrabble® Plays For The Word envy

ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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The 55 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In envy

ENVY
(42)
ENVY
(33)
ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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YEN
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ENVY
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YEN
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YEN
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YE
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YE
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ENVY
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ENVY
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YEN
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ENVY
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YE
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YEN
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ENVY
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YE
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ENVY
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YE
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YE
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YE
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envy in Words With Friends™

The word envy is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 11

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Play In The Letters envy:

ENVY
(51)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word envy

ENVY
(51)
ENVY
(39)
ENVY
(33)
ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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The 59 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In envy

ENVY
(51)
ENVY
(39)
ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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ENVY
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YEN
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ENVY
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YEN
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YEN
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ENVY
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YE
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YEN
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YE
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ENVY
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YEN
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YE
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YEN
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EN
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EN
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YEN
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YE
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YE
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YE
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Words within the letters of envy

2 letter words in envy (2 words)

3 letter words in envy (1 word)

4 letter words in envy (1 word)

envy + 1 blank (3 words)

envy + 2 blanks (3 words)

Words containing the sequence envy

Words that start with envy (2 words)

Words with envy in them (2 words)

Words that end with envy (1 word)

Word Growth involving envy

Shorter words in envy

en

Longer words containing envy

envying unenvying