Lexical and Semantic Relationships of the Terms Envy and Being Envious

Abstract

The Georgian word shuri (envy) is defined, by Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, as "being sad about someone else's good". Shuri (envy), in general, is an unkind emotion that pushes a person to any kind of evil. Several Georgian lexical units with negative semantics originate from the Georgian word shuri (envy). On the one hand, words with the meaning of "an evil desire to turn something belonging to someone else into one's own" (namely, shuri [envy]) and, on the other, "to be evil, driven by an excessive desire, and take revenge on a person" (ashurva, ashureba, aghshurveba, dashurveba lto envy], memshurne, moshurne [envious], sashuro ([causing envy], shurva; sheshurveba- [to envy], shuriani [envious], shurisgeba, shurisdzieba [avenge], shuroba enviousness, etc.).

The establishment of the term Shuri (envy) with the negative connotation is due to the unconscious birth in a person of a passion for envy which becomes the root of many other sins to which a man is subjugated through the unreasonable use of free will throughout his dishonest life.

As the history of human existence proves to us, from Genesis to the present day, a man directs the free will given to him to evil. On the other hand, based on the essential (ontological) concept of the soul, a person can overcome his “desire of passions” and turn this unkind desire into an aspiration for God. Because it is for this purpose that the heavenly Creator created man “in the image of God he created him” (Genesis 1,27).

From this point of view, the theological premise of the mutually exclusive development of the semantic pair of the Georgian Moshurne (envious) produced by the Old Georgian morpheme Shur (envy) – is considered in the report: 1. Old, „one who envies someone“, 2. Old, “burning with desire, assiduous, diligent, zealous” (Explanatory Dictionary of the Georgian Language V, 1958), based on which originates the theological purposefulness and semantic motive of the transformation of a reasonable person, freed from envy, into a benevolent person.