Kvelling

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To experience and convey a sense of joy or pride usually related to the success of others, often through enthusiastic expressions or storytelling
2. To proudly celebrate or boast about the accomplishments of oneself or others while feeling genuine happiness and admiration
3. To express overwhelming joy or pride, typically in response to the achievements of someone else, while sharing this emotion through enthusiastic remarks or storytelling

Etymology: Yiddish "kveln" meant "to well up" or "to swell," and its German ancestor, "quellen," still means to gush forth, as water from a spring. The image is physical: a spring bubbling up with more than it can hold. Yiddish speakers applied that picture to the feeling of a heart overflowing with pride, so "kvelling" is, at root, a kind of emotional spring. The verb traces back through Middle High German "quellen" and Old High German "quellan" to a Proto-West Germanic form, "*kwellan," which is also the source of English "quell," once meaning "a source or spring." English kept that older sense in "quell" only in the noun, and the verb "quell," meaning to suppress, took a different path.