sympathy
English
[edit]
Etymology
[edit]Borrowed from Middle French sympathie, from Late Latin sympathīa (“feeling in common”), from Ancient Greek σῠμπᾰ́θειᾰ (sŭmpắtheiă, “fellow feeling”), from σῠμπᾰθής (sŭmpăthḗs, “affected by like feelings; exerting mutual influence, interacting”) + -ῐᾰ (-ĭă, “-y”, nominal suffix). Equivalent to sym- (“acting or considered together”) + -pathy (“feeling”). Displaced native Old English efnþrōwung (literally “suffering with or together”).
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]sympathy (countable and uncountable, plural sympathies)
- A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another.
- Synonyms: compassion, pity; see also Thesaurus:compassion
- 2018, Sergeant first class Greg Stube, Conquer Anything: A Green Beret’s Guide to Building Your A-Team:
- (in the plural) The formal expression of pity or sorrow for someone else's misfortune.
- 2004 September 10, Edward Tverdek, “When Libertarians Go Shopping”, in Chicago Reader[1]:
- While you'll probably have her sympathies if your condominium association wants to preapprove your storm door, you'll need to work harder for her support if your boss at the music megastore demands you grow a goatee to help lend the place some indie cred.
- The ability to share the feelings of another.
- Inclination to think or feel alike; emotional or intellectual accord; common feeling.
- An affinity, association or mutual relationship between people or things such that they are correspondingly affected by any condition.
- 1858, William Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences:
- He observed, also, the frequent sympathy of volcanic and terremotive action in remote districts of the earth's surface, thus showing how deeply seated must be the cause of these convulsions.
- 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 121:
- A peculiarity of were-animals is the sympathy that exists between their animal form and that of the human with whom it is connected.
- 1960 December, “The riding of B.R. coaches”, in Trains Illustrated, page 706:
- The solution to coach riding defects, at least, seems to require much more co-operative practical experiment by all engineering departments to achieve better sympathy between the vehicle body, its undercarriage and the track on which it rides.
- 1997, Chris Horrocks, “The Renaissance Episteme”, in Introducing Foucault, Totem Books; Icon Books, →ISBN, page 67:
- Sympathy likened anything to anything else in universal attraction, e.g. the fate of men to the course of the planets.
Usage notes
[edit]- Used similarly to empathy, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, empathy is stronger and more intimate, while sympathy is weaker and more distant; see empathy: usage notes.
Antonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another — see also compassion
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mutual relationship
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
References
[edit]- “sympathy”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
- “sympathy”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from Middle French
- English terms derived from Middle French
- English terms borrowed from Late Latin
- English terms derived from Late Latin
- English terms borrowed from Ancient Greek
- English terms derived from Ancient Greek
- English terms prefixed with sym-
- English terms suffixed with -pathy
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/ɪmpəθi
- Rhymes:English/ɪmpəθi/3 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with usage examples
- en:Art
- en:Emotions