Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use sympathetic in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun

Sympathetic means of, related to, feeling, showing, or characterized by sympathy. Example: “John looked very upset. I gave him a sympathetic look.”

Examples of sympathetic by meaning

adjectiveOf, related to, feeling, showing, or characterized by sympathy.

  • John looked very upset. I gave him a sympathetic look.
  • Vaublanc, in San Domingo so sympathetic to the sorrows of labour in France, had to fly from Paris in August, 1792, to escape the wrath of the French workers.1963, C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd revised edition, page 14

adjectiveRelating to, producing, or denoting an effect which arises through an affinity, interdependence, or mutual association.

  • Sympathetic magic is based on imitation or correspondence.

adjectiveA supernatural connection or power resulting from two items having the same form or some other correspondence. (of...

  • One of his great enthusiasms was for a "sympathetic" weapon salve, an idea originating in Paracelsus.1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 225

adjectiveRelating to or denoting the part of the autonomic nervous system consisting of nerves arising from ganglia near the...

  • Sympathetic innervation involves epinephrine.
  • It was suggested that adrenaline might act at the junction of sympathetic nerves and the effector organs, and that adrenaline might be released at sympathetic nerve endings.1967, Leslie L. Iversen, The Uptake and Storage of Noradrenaline in Sympathetic Nerves, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 23

More sentences with sympathetic

  • Government MPs sympathetic to the opposition's arguments are starting to break cover.From the entry break cover
  • It contained these themes, but also had a sympathetic Asian and Black, or “Blasian,” protagonist.2020 December 8, George Yang, “Orientalism, 'Cyberpunk 2077,' and Yellow Peril in Science Fiction”, in Wired, →ISSN. From the entry blasian
  • The lone farmstand worker, sympathetic to my fugue state, encouraged me to try one—raw.2018, Paul Zitarelli, 36 Bottles of Wine: Less Is More with 3 Recommended Wines per Month Plus Seasonal Recipe Pairings, Sasquatch Books…. From the entry raab
  • He had at no time been sympathetic to Tyler’s Jewish aspirations.2010, Howard Jacobson, chapter 11, in The Finkler Question, New York: Bloomsbury, page 271. From the entry antecedence
  • Bad Cop defines the hard line stance, while Good Cop is the sympathetic problem solver.2009, Deborah Douglas, Ripe: Harvesting the Value of Your Business, SelectBooks, Inc., →ISBN. From the entry good cop/bad cop
  • Centrally acting sympathicolytics cause a decrease in the sympathetic outflow from the brainstem.2005, Sophie Mataniele Mogotlane, Joyce Mokoena, Motshedisi Eunice Chauke, Anne Young, editors, Juta’s Manual of Nursing: Medical Surgical…. From the entry sympathicolytic
  • He doubtless hoped for a sympathetic ruling from President Reagan, at 70 no spring chicken himself.1981 November 23, “Newest Sub, Oldest Sailor”, in Time. From the entry spring chicken
  • I’d be very demanding and insistent one minute and very sympathetic and supportive the next.1980, Hal Aigner, Faint Trails: An Introduction to the Fundamentals of Adult Adoptee/birth Parent Reunification Searches, Paradigm Press…. From the entry good cop-bad cop
  • Toynbee finds that the Buddhaic viewpoint is not sympathetic to the study of history.1960, Jewish Life, page 61. From the entry Buddhaic
  • His discoveries have been made by sympathetic looking rather than by assiduous archivizing.1951, Time & Tide, page 259, column 1. From the entry archivize
  • They are of extrapsychic origin and are related to the sympathetic centers.1940, The Journal of the American Medical Association 1940-03-23: Volume 114, Issue 12, American Medical Association, page 1121. From the entry extrapsychic
  • We must have some of our own sympathetic people to counteract it."1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html)…. From the entry vibration
  • These “vagotropic” actions can be referred to decreased irritability of the sympathetic nerve-endings.1921, Association for the Study of Internal Secretions, Endocrinology. From the entry vagotropic
  • We must be content to signalize a by-stroke of sympathetic delicacy.1907, Caroline Lane Reynolds Slemmer Jebb (lady.), Arthur Woollgar Verrall, Life and letters of Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, O. M., LITT.…. From the entry by-stroke
  • And I'm sympathetic to teachers who feel that they have enough to worry about, without adding A.I.-generated homework to the mix.2023 January 12, Kevin Roose, “Don't Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It.”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 17 Jan…. From the entry homework
  • Am I the only one who feels conflicted by being both mad and sympathetic towards the dev team.2023 October 18, u/m2slam, “Cities: Skylines 2 devs warn players of performance problems: 'we have not achieved the benchmark we…. From the entry cz
  • He was sympathetic with my suspicions, but he was glad that he hadn't been responsible for this particular effort at elucidation.2016, Michael Z. Lewin, The Silent Salesman. From the entry elucidated
  • The targets suggest the attackers are sympathetic to the vast censorship apparatus known as the Great Firewall of China.2015 March 31, Dan Goodin, “Massive denial-of-service attack on GitHub tied to Chinese government”, in Ars Technica, retrieved 01 Apr 2015. From the entry attacker
  • I am thoroughly sympathetic on these points.2010, Sonja Tanner, In Praise of Plato's Poetic Imagination, page 6. From the entry downplaying
  • People sympathetic to WikiLeaks, in the meantime, had voluntarily mirrored the website in order to keep it online.2010 December 17, K Vaidya Nathan, “Beware the Streisand effect”, in The Indian Express, The Indian Express Limited, retrieved 29 Oct 2012. From the entry Streisand effect
  • At lively talkbacks some accused the show of overly sympathetic attitudes toward evangelicals, while others said it mocked the faithful.2009 February 1, Alexis Soloski, “One Troupe’s Heartland Pilgrimage”, in New York Times. From the entry talkbacks
  • Mum's a real bottler and you′ll find her very sympathetic.2007, Anthony David Parsons, Tony Parsons, Valley of the White Gold. From the entry bottler
  • He is a good value—earnest, sympathetic, solid to the bone and not overcomplicated—just the way you′d hope your undertaker would be.2007, Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land, page 95. From the entry good value
  • Our view relies on a plenitudinous metaphysics to which we are antecedently sympathetic, and adds to it one bold hypothesis.2007 July 14, John Hawthorne, Andrew McGonigal, “The many minds account of vagueness”, in Philosophical Studies, volume 138, number 3, →DOI. From the entry plenitudinous
  • One might think, reading through his works, that the man did not have a sympathetic bone in his body.2006, Robert C. Solomon, Living with Nietzsche, page 95. From the entry bone in one's body
  • In Smallville’s teen fantasy, the themes of alienation and the search for identity easily transmute into homoromanticism and sympathetic queerness.2005, Louisa Ellen Stein, "'They Cavort, You Decide': Transgenericism, Queerness, and Fan Interpretation in Teen TV", Spectator, Volume…. From the entry homoromanticism
  • He looked so sympathetic that I felt sorry about doing my block and asked him to have a whisky.2003, Dal Stivens, Jimmy Brockett: Portrait of a Notable Australian, page 283. From the entry do one's block
  • Hardingfele: “Hardanger fiddle.” A traditional Norwegian folk instrument, resembling a violin, with four bowed strings and four sympathetic strings.2002 June 30, Frederick K. Smith, Nordic Art Music: From the Middle Ages to the Third Millennium, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, →ISBN, pages…. From the entry slått
  • Symptomatology had first been noted during an Ob-Gyn rotation, when flushing, blushing, gonophobia, and sympathetic labor pains and hot flashes occurred.1980, The Caducean, page 151. From the entry gonophobia
  • It was a sympathetic belch, a belch of brotherhood.1976, Robert Nye, Falstaff. From the entry contumely
  • Sympathetic criticisms were unnumbing me; I desired to paint again.1944, Emily Carr, “Art and the House”, in The House of All Sorts. From the entry unnumb
  • I am so sympathetic to her attitudes, reactions and general thesis as not to care to court divergencies of opinion.1931, Hart Crane, letter, 13 June. From the entry divergency
  • The artichoke is elegant, but hardly sympathetic.1931, Katharine Kinard Doughtie, Groceries & Notions. From the entry cabbagehead
  • The bond was sympathetic, but intellectually not clearly established.1930, Gorham Munson, The Dilemma of the Liberated, page 62. From the entry standpatter

Meaning of sympathetic

  1. adjective Of, related to, feeling, showing, or characterized by sympathy.
  2. adjective Showing approval of or favor towards an idea or action.
  3. adjective Attracting the liking of others. (of a person).

Full definition of sympathetic

Questions about sympathetic in a sentence

How do you use sympathetic in a sentence?
Sympathetic is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “John looked very upset. I gave him a sympathetic look.”
What is a short sentence with sympathetic?
“Sympathetic innervation involves epinephrine.”
What does sympathetic mean?
Sympathetic means of, related to, feeling, showing, or characterized by sympathy.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sympathetic (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use sympathetic in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/sympathetic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.