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What does 'gloated' mean in the following quote from Tom Sawyer:

It was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement.

To provide some context, Tom and Huck found a big sum of money, and the city was 'gloating over' their find.

I found out that 'gloat' means "to take satisfaction in another's misfortune".

But they found a treasure, which is quite fortunate. How does 'gloated over' fits there?

Quote:

THE reader may rest satisfied that Tom's and Huck's windfall made a mighty stir in the poor little village of St. Petersburg. So vast a sum, all in actual cash, seemed next to incredible. It was talked about, gloated over, glorified, until the reason of many of the citizens tottered under the strain of the unhealthy excitement. Every "haunted" house in St. Petersburg and the neighboring villages was dissected, plank by plank, and its foundations dug up and ransacked for hidden treasure — and not by boys, but men — pretty grave, unromantic men, too, some of them. Wherever Tom and Huck appeared they were courted, admired, stared at. The boys were not able to remember that their remarks had possessed weight before; but now their sayings were treasured and repeated; everything they did seemed somehow to be regarded as remarkable; they had evidently lost the power of doing and saying commonplace things; moreover, their past history was raked up and discovered to bear marks of conspicuous originality. The village paper published biographical sketches of the boys.

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As Merriam-Webster says, gloat means “to observe or think about something with triumphant and often malicious satisfaction, gratification, or delight.” So here Twain is saying that the townspeople celebrated vicariously, and probably that they felt themselves better (by association with the fortunate boys) than their acquaintances in nearby towns.

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  • Can I clarify that when dictionary definitions say 'often' they mean 'but not always', so that to gloat in M-W means "to observe or think about something with triumphant satisfaction, gratification, or delight that is often, but not always, malicious”.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented May 26 at 10:00
  • Good clarification, @MichaelHarvey.
    – Paul Tanenbaum
    Commented May 26 at 10:05
  • The meaning of gloat has changed with time. According to the OED it originally (16th C) meant to look at furtively, then to look at admiringly or amorously, then "to gaze with intense or passionate satisfaction". The 1913 Webster's dictionary is closer to Twain's time than the modern dictionary, and its definition is "To look steadfastly; to gaze earnestly; -- usually in a bad sense, to gaze with malignant satisfaction, passionate desire, lust, or avarice." Now its main sense is excessive celebration or taking pleasure in others' loss.
    – Stuart F
    Commented May 26 at 14:43
  • Fascinating, @StuartF. So my reading may have been at least in part an ascribing of a modern meaning to an earlier usage. Like one of the reasons John McWhorter argues that Shakespeare should be performed in translation—into English, to wit, “English has changed so deeply since Shakespeare’s time that today we are incapable of catching much more than the basic gist of a great deal of his writing, although the similarity of the forms of the words to ours tricks us into thinking otherwise.”
    – Paul Tanenbaum
    Commented May 26 at 14:55
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Gloating involves a feeling of superiority on the part of the gloater. Now the citizens of the small village of St Petersburg (an ironic name for a tiny place) feel they have something that they can "lord over" other towns. Doesn't such gloating reveal something about the smallness of the place and the parochialism of its proud boosters?

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