Ressentiment
Etymology
French for "resentment," from "re-" and "sentir" (to feel). Friedrich Nietzsche adopted it as a technical term in "On the Genealogy of Morality" (1887), and Max Scheler later developed it; it is kept in French to mark this reactive, value-creating grudge rather than ordinary spite.
noun · /ruh-sahn-tee-MAHN/
A simmering, self-poisoning resentment that reinvents one’s own weakness or envy as moral superiority.
What it names
A handle for a specific corrosive posture — reach for it to name the way frustrated hostility can curdle into a whole value system that exalts the meek and vilifies the strong.
Example
His endless sneering at “elites” had less to do with justice than with a ressentiment he had dressed up as principle.
Related idea
Deeper than passing schadenfreude, which enjoys another’s misfortune in the moment; ressentiment is a lasting orientation that reshapes one’s morality around the grudge.