 Some of the examples advanced on behalf of the suggested bifurcation threaten to obscure the issue. It will not do, for instance, simply to point out that people commonly say that they envy someone’s skill in cases where it is quite implausible to suppose that they have any desire that the person loses the skill. There is undoubtedly a common tendency to use the term ‘envy’ for any desire for something that is possessed by another. But, given the looseness of natural language noted above, we must not simply assume that these are really cases of the emotional syndrome of envy. Although some discussions of envy seem to treat any desire for [an instance of] what another person has as envy, this threatens to assimilate some cases of envy to  admiration.[7]