different between empathy vs sympathy

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

Borrowed from Middle French sympathie, from Late Latin sympath?a (“feeling in common”), from Ancient Greek ?????????? (sumpátheia, “fellow feeling”), from ???????? (sumpath?s, “affected by like feelings; exerting mutual influence, interacting”) +? -?? (-ia, “-y”, nominal suffix); equivalent to sym- (“acting or considered together”) +? -pathy (“feeling”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?s?m.p??.i/
• Rhymes: -?mp??i

Noun

sympathy (countable and uncountable, plural sympathies)

1. A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another.

   Synonym: compassion

   1. (in the plural) The formal expression of pity or sorrow for someone else's misfortune.
   2. The ability to share the feelings of another.
2. Inclination to think or feel alike; emotional or intellectual accord; common feeling.
   1. (in the plural) Support in the form of shared feelings or opinions.
   2. Feeling of loyalty; tendency towards, agreement with or approval of an opinion or aim; a favorable attitude.

3. An affinity, association or mutual relationship between people or things such that they are correspondingly affected by any condition.
   1. Mutual or parallel susceptibility or a condition brought about by it.
   2. (art) Artistic harmony, as of shape or colour in a painting.

Usage notes

• 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

• contempt (context-dependent)

Derived terms

Translations

References

• “sympathy”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.
• “sympathy”, in Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary, (Please provide a date or year).