different between empathy vs attunement

English

Etymology

A twentieth-century borrowing from Ancient Greek ???????? (empátheia, literally “passion”) (formed from ?? (en, “in, at”) + ????? (páthos, “feeling”)), coined by Edward Bradford Titchener in 1909 to translate German Einfühlung. The modern word in Greek ???????? (empátheia) has an opposite meaning denoting strong negative feelings and prejudice against someone.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??mp??i/

Noun

empathy (countable and uncountable, plural empathies)

1. Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person.

2. Capacity to understand another person's point of view or the result of such understanding.
3. (parapsychology, science fiction) A paranormal ability to psychically read another person's emotions.
4. (obsolete slang) MDMA.

   Synonym: ecstasy

Usage notes

Used similarly to sympathy, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, empathy is stronger and more intimate, meaning that the subject understands and shares an emotion with the object—as in “I feel your pain”—while sympathy is weaker and more distant—concern, but not shared emotion: “I care for you”.

Derived terms

• empath

Translations

See also

• telepathy
• biopathy
• cyberpathy
• technopathy
• sympathy

Further reading

• empathy on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• empathy at OneLook Dictionary Search
• empathy in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• empathy in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

English

Etymology

attune +? -ment

Noun

attunement (countable and uncountable, plural attunements)

1. (uncountable) The quality of being in tune with something
2. (countable) The process of attuning or becoming attuned