sympathy
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English
[edit]
Etymology
[edit]Borrowed from Middle French sympathie, from Late Latin sympathīa (“feeling in common”), from Ancient Greek σῠμπᾰ́θειᾰ (sumpátheia, “fellow feeling”), from σῠμπᾰθής (sumpathḗs, “affected by like feelings; exerting mutual influence, interacting”) + -ῐᾰ (-ia, “-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.
- 2018, Sergeant first class Greg Stube, Conquer Anything: A Green Beret’s Guide to Building Your A-Team:
- Synonym: compassion
- (in the plural) The formal expression of pity or sorrow for someone else's misfortune.
- 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
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- en:Emotions