Here at Vocabulary.com, we are constantly on the lookout for funky and impressively obscure words deserving of a comeback. Case in point: emulous.

Emulous is a fantastic word that gives us the ability to describe a feeling that dogs many of us all through life and yet is very hard to pinpoint.

Here's what our Dictionary has to say:

In other words, emulous describes that I-hate-you-because-I-want-to-be-you relationship so many of us have with our siblings or close friends. The feeling is so universal, you'd think you'd come across emulous everywhere.

You won't. Just check out the way that Daily Mail writer Judith Woods, in a piece on adult sibling rivalry, went to town with A+ words, including corrosive, stagnant, secretive, insidious, and even Schadenfreude, but didn't trot out emulous even the one time: 

It’s bad enough being second best to your schoolmate at sports as a 13-year-old; how much worse to feel completely eclipsed as a 33-year-old by your brother’s high-flying career or your sister’s perfect partner? And no matter how much we love our brother or sister deep down, when sibling envy takes hold, it has a corrosive effect on our ability to express affection. Overt rivalry in childhood is upfront, dynamic and character-building, a necessary rite of passage that enables each child to find their niche within the family. But sibling envy in adulthood is a stagnant, secretive emotion that finds its insidious expression in anger and Schadenfreude.

Maybe Woods isn't using emulous because if she did, her readers wouldn't know what she meant. Or maybe emulous didn't occur to Woods because she hasn't come across it in her own reading. Both scenarios are likely — in spite of its usefulness, emulous is teetering on the edge of extinction. Our Dictionary tells us we can expect an emulous sighting only once in every 14,397 pages of text we read. 

Compare that to similar-sounding emulate, which appears every 1,143 pages, envious, which appears once every 1,133, and tremulous, which beats both at 843.

Then look at Google Ngram Viewer's picture of how these words' popularity, or lack thereof, has changed over time, with emulate outstripping both envious and tremulous over the last century and a half, even as emulous has fallen increasingly behind.

What's going on? Wouldn't a person gripped by envy of a brother or sister, whom they also love deeply, derive some comfort in knowing that this feeling is common enough we have a word for it? Isn't that what words essentially are for — to help us create a common culture by agreeing on a system of names for things that are? Or at the very least, couldn't this word trim a few dollars off our therapy bills? 

So let's bring emulous back into circulation. Start by clicking the "learn" button on the emulous page in our Dictionary to add it to your personal word learning program on Vocabulary.com. Then drop it into casual conversation everywhere you go.

If your vocabulary bling makes your siblings feel emulous at the next family barbecue, maybe they can go hunting for some impressively obscure vocabulary of their own. (In this vein, we recommend Wayne State Word Warriors' list Words that Deserve Wider Use.)