The Color of Envy

There was a time when I thought that the expression, 'He/She turned green with envy,' was just an expression with no fundamentum in re. But one day in graduate school, at a dissertation defense, I observed a particularly vain professor's face acquire a decidedly greenish tinge as he watched a somewhat pompous but very bright doctoral candidate hold forth in defense of his thesis. The vain professor literally became green with envy as his vanity was outshone by the student's brilliance.

I then knew that the expression had a basis in reality. But I have never seen the phenomenon since.  The facial color change, that is.  If only the emotion were as rare.