What color is traditionally associated with envy?

To be “Green with envy” means that you’re extremely jealous of another persons possessions, achievements, or outcomes. Typically, people will use the expression with a lighthearted tone, but there are times when people may use it to describe an adverse feeling they have for someone else.

Back in the time of Ancient Greece, scholars would associate a green complexion in a person with an illness, overproduction of bile in the stomach, or jealousy. As a result, the expression “green with envy” refers to a person feeling so jealous that it makes them feel ill.

One of the first use cases of the idiom is in William Shakespeare’s “Othello.” In the play, Shakespeare pens the following.

“Beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on …”

However, language experts suggest that Shakespeare was not the originator of the phrase. The French will sometimes use the expression, “vert de jalousie,” but there is no indication that this phrase appeared in the French language before Shakespeare’s use of the term in his play.

Some sources state “green with envy,” instead of “jealousy,” predates Shakespeare, and there are some suggestions that the original form of the phrase was “yellow with envy.” However, the term never took off, and green is the preferred version in modern culture.