green with envy
5
4.5
- idiom
- Informal
:
verde de envidia
- Gretel has been hired as associate editor, and Jill is green with envy.
- make others green with envy
- turn green with envy
Examples
-
It was an instant sensation; Dallas was said to be green with envy.
Academic text (2004) -
You'll be green with envy!
-
And all the women are green with envy.
-
Other girls always turned around to look at us, and I knew they were green with envy.
Fiction book (1995) -
He loves that, and the other kids go green with envy.
-
It makes all the women green with envy!
-
At school, I'd tell him about the trips that Grandpa and I made, and he would look green with envy.
Fiction book (1994) -
But the thing that I was most stunned by, as a content creator myself, I was green with envy when I saw your studio setup.
-
Liz is one of those mums who makes you green with envy.
Blog text (24) -
Eisner's first contract at Disney made him so rich that other CEOs were green with envy.
Synonyms
340
1.0
Feeling unhappy because someone has something or success you want
51
2.4
Feeling unhappy because you want what someone else has
4
6.0
Feeling jealous because you fear being replaced
Antonyms
How Envious
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase combines the adjective 'green' with the explicit cause 'with envy', so a learner who knows 'green' and 'envy' can compositionally infer being 'green' as a metaphorical state caused by envy (i.e., very jealous). This color-metaphor is conventional and appears in other languages, making the overall meaning directly derivable for an average B1 learner.
Etymology
Green with envy may come from an old idea that strong jealousy made a person look green when they felt envy, like when someone looks 'sick'. One popular writer, Shakespeare, even called jealousy a 'green-eyed monster', and that's why the phrase means 'very jealous'.