by foo-bar-bat | 2025-10-30 23:03:31+00:00
These words all have different meaning. Because they all have different origins. Modern English (say post Shake-Speare, but especially American TV and music that is marketed globally) have grotesquely collapsed these words already.

For example

- Happy means "I'm feeling lucky." Like the old Google search button. You're happy when you say, hit your full house on the river... precisely because what just HAPPENED fulfilled your hope, but randomly and subtley perhaps without agency. This is a Norse germanic word. Its romance synonym is not pleased, rather fortunate. For example a baseball player hitting a home run off the bottom ten feet of the foul (fair) pole is and should feel happy; the same player hitting a home run entirely out of the park having successfully predicted the pitch with skill and agency, this is different. They are experiencing a different feeling. We've just forgotten the meaning of words. For example see Shakespeare "Oh happy dagger..." for a juxtaposition that is already playing with this. Obviously the inanimate object doesn't have feelings. And she is not glad or delighted, she's suicidal at that moment. It's the dagger that has won the lottery of sheathing itself in her tragic bosom?

- Glad means not pleased or happy but rather "bright and shining" or what a third party would perceive as radiant or glowing, even joyful. So Achilles in his touched/trance zone, bride walking down altar? Shakespeare uses it to connote an inside feeling in response to again something out of your control but not, as with happy, having any concept of fortune or luck. Rather like, I am glad of you, seeing you, being with you. It wants a other person and speaks intrinsically to a subject-object interaction: it's about perception and reaction. Happy is about being stoked because YOU were lucky, nobody needs to witness it. Glad requires an other. Notably Neil Sheehan chose "A Bright Shining lie" for his amazing book. This is another very intellectual choice (like Juliet above by Shakespeare) by an author who clearly knows his etymology? It's about the tension between what was really going on (objectively) and what people thought was going on (subjectively).

- Pleased is our first non-Germanic word. Broadly, English from German/Norse origins are a) older, b) shorter, and c) experiential not analytical. Pleasure is not that. It's going to be arriving with the Normans circa 1066 (a few generations before and after, by location in physical geography of the Anglophones ie Bordeaux vs Yorkshire) and the key concept is satisfying somebody's expectations: Pleased means a state of Acceptableness. Your home run above satisfies the expectations of the coach and your fans. That's why they are cheering. Not because you are happy to be lucky; or glad to be on fire; but because you accomplished THEIR goals. It's a technical analytical state of being, eg you should be pleased your candidate release passes acceptance/regressio testing. I hope you don't feel happy or look too glad. Act like you've done this before etc. A football player who puts down the football after scoring without a stupid celebration dance is pleased.

- Delighted is obviously another non Germanic admix word in via the romance languages with the Frenchies. The key concept is your experience of something alluring, charming, seductive, delicious. It's a .. sensual word but also, like so many romance language words is a bit detached and analytical. Smart guy word for the feeling at the end of a process of getting what you wanted. Unlike happ and glad, which are for... bros verbing/living in the moment? The fact delighted just means "super pleased" or "double plus glad" now is a sign we already live in the collapse you envision. Which is a shame.

Ps you can fix it by reading books that are merely 50+ years old.