empathy
/ˈɛmpəθi/
empathy noun: identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person.
Noun
empathy (countable and uncountable, plural empathies)
- Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person.
- She had a lot of empathy for her neighbor; she knew what it was like to lose a parent too.
- Like your body's in the room but you're not really there / Like you have empathy inside but you don't really care / Like you're fresh outta love but it's been in the air / Am I past repair?2022 January 28, Em Beihold, Nick Lopez, Dru DeCaro, “Numb Little Bug”, in Egg in the Backseat, performed by Em Beihold
- Synonyms:
- fellow feeling
- The capacity to understand another person's point of view or the result of such understanding.
- A paranormal ability to psychically read another person's emotions.
- MDMA.
- Synonyms:
- ecstasy
empathy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
empathy in Hindi
- intellectual identification with another person
- समानुभूति samānubhūti
- capacity to understand another person's point of view
- सहानुभूति sahānubhūti
empathy in Tamil
- கண்ணோட்டம், கழிவிரக்கம், தாட்சண்ணியம், பச்சாதாபம், ஒத்துணர்வு
empathy in Marathi
- समानुभूती
empathy in Urdu
- درد مندی, ہمدردی, ہم دلی, ہم احساسی, ہمگدازی, ذہنی ہم آہنگی
More languagesFewer languages
- empathy in Bengali
- সমবেদনা śombedona
- empathy in Telugu
- తాదాత్మ్యం
- empathy in Malayalam
- സഹാനുഭൂതി sahānubhūti
- empathy in Kannada
- ಹೊಂದಾಣಿಕೆ, ಸಂವೇದನ
- empathy in Gujarati
- સમાનુભૂતિ
- empathy in Nepali
- समानुभूति
- empathy in Arabic
- تَعَاطُف taʕāṭuf
- empathy in Indonesian
- empati
- empathy in Persian
- همدلی hamdeli
- empathy in Vietnamese
- thấu cảm, cộng cảm
Examples of empathy in a sentence
- Empathy seemed to be absent from the messages.
- Its members taught him the “radical empathy” of Jesus, he said.
- Vance used the example to make a broader point about empathy and moral behavior.
Synonyms of empathy
Forms of empathy
| plural | empathies |
|---|
Origin of empathy
A twentieth-century borrowing from Ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια (empátheia, literally “passion”) (formed from ἐν (en, “in, at”) + πάθος (páthos, “feeling”)), equivalent to em- + -pathy, coined by Edward Bradford Titchener in 1909 to translate German Einfühlung. The modern word in Greek εμπάθεια (empátheia) has an opposite meaning denoting strong negative feelings and prejudice against someone.
Words formed from empathy
Phrases with empathy
Questions about empathy
- What does empathy mean?
- Empathy means identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person.
- What is empathy in Hindi?
- Empathy in Hindi is समानुभूति (samānubhūti), सहानुभूति (sahānubhūti). See Empathy meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is empathy?
- Empathy is a noun.
- How do you pronounce empathy?
- Empathy is pronounced /ˈɛmpəθi/.
- What is the plural of empathy?
- The plural of empathy is empathies.
Words near empathy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: empathy (page history and authors); empathy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); empathy (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); empathy (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); সমবেদনা (Bengali) (page history and authors); empathy (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); empathy (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); empathy (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); empathy (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-empathy.wav.
Cite this entry: “empathy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/empathy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.