嫉妬
しっと
shitto
= jealousy; envy
嫉妬 (shitto) is jealousy — the sharp, heavy kind, whether it’s romantic jealousy over a partner or bitter envy of someone else’s success. It’s the serious, grown-up word for a feeling Japanese also has much cuter and milder ways to describe.
嫉妬 works as a noun and a する-verb: 嫉妬する (to feel jealous), 嫉妬心 (shittoshin, feelings of jealousy), 嫉妬深い (shittobukai, jealous or possessive by nature). It covers both romantic jealousy — resenting a rival for your partner’s attention — and envy of what others have achieved, like 友達の成功に嫉妬する (to be jealous of a friend’s success). It is weighty and a little literary, the word for jealousy taken seriously.
Japanese draws useful distinctions here. やきもち (yakimochi) is the cute, casual word for (usually romantic) jealousy — literally ‘grilled mochi’ — and やきもちを焼く (‘to burn/grill mochi’) is the playful idiom for getting a little jealous over a loved one. It’s affectionate where 嫉妬 is intense. Meanwhile 羨ましい (urayamashii) is the everyday adjective for the milder, often good-natured ‘I’m envious / I wish I had that’, with none of 嫉妬’s darkness.
So the same underlying feeling spans a spectrum: 羨ましい is light and open, やきもち is cute and forgivable, and 嫉妬 is the deep, sometimes corrosive version you’d use for real possessiveness or gnawing resentment.
Pick the strength that fits. A friend got a new phone and you’re mildly envious? That’s 羨ましい. Your partner is texting someone and you feel a small pang? That’s やきもち. Deep, consuming jealousy is 嫉妬 — using it for trivial envy sounds overly dramatic.
Remember the idiom やきもちを焼く for cute romantic jealousy; it’s far more common in daily speech than 嫉妬する when teasing a partner.
Use 嫉妬深い to describe a jealous, possessive personality (彼は嫉妬深い, ‘he’s the jealous type’). It’s a character trait, distinct from a one-time feeling of 嫉妬.
Casual / Social Media
同期の出世に、正直ちょっと嫉妬してしまう。
Douki no shusse ni, shoujiki chotto shitto shite shimau.
Honestly, I can’t help feeling a bit jealous of my colleague’s promotion.
Everyday use
彼はとても嫉妬深くて、少し疲れてしまう。
Kare wa totemo shittobukakute, sukoshi tsukarete shimau.
He’s really the jealous type, and it gets a little exhausting.
Formal / Cultural context
嫉妬という感情は、誰の心にも潜んでいる。
Shitto to iu kanjou wa, dare no kokoro ni mo hisonde iru.
The emotion called jealousy lurks in everyone’s heart.
The gentler cousin やきもち (yakimochi) is a small window into how playfully Japanese can treat jealousy. The word literally means ‘grilled rice cake’, and the idiom やきもちを焼く puns on 焼く, which means both ‘to grill’ and, in older usage, ‘to be jealous’. That a burning snack became the everyday image for a jealous pang says a lot about softening a prickly emotion into something affectionate.
嫉妬 in its darker form has haunted Japanese literature for a thousand years. In the classic Tale of Genji, the character Lady Rokujō is consumed by jealousy so intense that her spirit leaves her body as a 生霊 (ikiryou, a living ghost) to harm her rivals — one of the most famous images of 嫉妬 in the canon, and proof of how seriously the culture has long taken the emotion.
That intensity is crystallized in the 般若 (hannya) mask of Noh theater, whose horns, glaring eyes, and anguished mouth depict a woman transformed by jealousy and resentment into a demon. The hannya is instantly recognizable in Japanese art and tattoos, and it stands as a powerful cultural symbol of how 嫉妬, left to burn, can distort even a gentle heart.