Even Greener Pastures

The word jealous has several meanings in English. I used to only associate it with showing suspicion in a relationship, until I heard someone say something like "you're going to Greece for two weeks? I'm so jealous." It sounded like a completely irrelevant piece of information to me, as though they were saying "by the way, I don't trust my husband at all". I know now that jealous can also mean envious and I just found out it can also mean fiercely protective of one's rights or possessions.

In Czech, there isn't a word that would cover any combination of these meanings. We have a separate word for jealous in a relationship (žárlivý) and jealous as in wanting the thing someone else has (závistivý). We would, however, use the related verbs (žárlit, závidět) rather than the adjectives in most contexts. I'm struggling to think of one single word that would convey the meaning protective.

How do languages you know handle this? Is there one word for for both jealous and envious?

Yes, I think that English is pretty loose about treating jealous and envious as just about synonymous a lot of the time.

In German there is Neid(isch): envy, defined in Duden as „Empfindung, Haltung, bei der jmd. einem andern dessen Besitz od. Erfolg nicht gönnt u. selbst haben möchte“ the feeling or attitude with which someone would begrudge another some possession or success and would like to have it for himself.

And Eifersucht(eifersüchtig): (jealously)
starke, übersteigerte Furcht, jmds. Liebe od. einen Vorteil mit einem anderen teilen zu müssen od. an einen anderen zu verlieren: the strong and overwhelming fear of losing or having to share the love or someone or an advantage with someone else.

I‘ve always thought of jealousy as having to do with people and envy just characteristics or possessions, usually of a nature that someone can never have.

Envy is considered the most destructive of human emotions because it generates a sort of melancholy hate. Where jealously is more the desire to have what another has, but it doesn’t exclude the possibility of that person eventually having it. 

So, a 60 year old can be envious of a 30 year old because he can never be 30 again. But the 60 year old can be jealous of the neighbor‘s pretty wife (doesn’t mean he can never have one himself). That’s why envy is so much more destructive than jealously.

Thank you, Steven and Susan. I wasn't aware of the nuance in meaning between envy and jealousy and I wasn't aware the noun jealousy was still applicable when talking about wanting something. I thought jealousy only applied to love relationships. I find it really interesting that the similarity in meaning is regionally determined in Spanish and even two people in the same country might have different opinions. I think there is a general theme to the word "jealous" in English, which is the desire to own something and the fear of losing it. I think that once we look into the concepts that words with multiple meanings represent, we can often find a connection between the individual meanings.

I'm still hoping to find out how it is in other languages.

Thank you, Martin. I would never expect the word "żarliwość" to have a positive meaning.