different between voracious vs empathy

English

Etymology

From Latin vor?x, from vor? (“I devour”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /v????e?.??s/, /v???e?.??s/
• Rhymes: -e???s

Adjective

voracious (comparative more voracious, superlative most voracious)

1. Wanting or devouring great quantities of food.
   • 1719, Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, ch. 6:

     I never had so much as . . . one wish to God to direct me whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well from voracious creatures as cruel savages.

   • 1867, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, ch. 45:

     The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious assault on the breakfast.

   • 1910, Jack London, "The Human Drift":

     Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and voracious, the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar regions.

2. Having a great appetite for anything.
   • 1922, Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, ch. 7:

     If he carried chiefly his appetite, a zeal for tiled bathrooms, a conviction that the Pullman car is the acme of human comfort, and a belief that it is proper to tip waiters, taxicab drivers, and barbers, but under no circumstances station agents and ushers, then his Odyssey will be replete with good meals and bad meals, bathing adventures, compartment-train escapades, and voracious demands for money.

   • 2005, Nathan Thornburgh, "The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies," Time, 29 Aug.:

     Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find.

Synonyms

• (devouring great quantities of food): See Thesaurus:voracious
• (having a great appetite for anything): See Thesaurus:greedy

Derived terms

Related terms

• voracity

Translations

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.