vicariously
adverb

- experienced through the activities of other people, rather than by doing something yourself.

- experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another.

- a vicarious pleasure or feeling is experienced by watching, listening to, or reading about other people doing something, rather than by doing it yourself.

Cambridge Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Collins English Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

Vicariously comes from the Latin noun vicis — meaning "change," "turn," or "stead" (i.e., someone's place). From vicis came the Late Latin adjective vicarius, meaning "a substitute" or "one acting in place of another." This also gave us the English word vicar — originally a church official acting on behalf of a bishop — and the prefix vice- (as in vice-president: someone who stands in for the president).

The word entered English in the 17th century. By the 19th century, vicarious had broadened beyond the legal and ecclesiastical to cover any experience felt second-hand — what a person feels when they stand in imaginatively for someone else.

The legal sense survives today in phrases like vicarious liability — where an employer is held responsible for an employee's actions — and vicarious trauma, the psychological toll suffered by therapists and aid workers who absorb the distress of those they help.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

at one remove, armchair travel, armchair-style, backseat driver, bask in reflected glory, borrowed experience (glory), by association, by proxy, by substitution, derivatively, empathetically, experiencing at one remove, imaginatively, in absentia, in another's shoes, indirectly, in imagination, in proxy, in someone else's shoes, in sympathy, live through someone else, living through (others), mediately, mediated experience, on behalf of another, on someone else's behalf, parasocially, reflected experience, reliving, representatively, secondhandedly, share in someone's joy, spectator-style, stand in someone's shoes, substitutionally, substitutively, sympathetically, take VICARIOUS pleasure, through another's eyes, through imagination, through others, through someone else, through someone else's experience (eyes), walk in someone's footsteps (shoes)

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“Rather than taking credit themselves, good managers take VICARIOUS pleasure in seeing their team achieve success."

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