Word of the Day:
sympathy
What It Means
A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another.
The formal expression of pity or sorrow for someone else's misfortune.
The ability to share the feelings of another.
Many people in Hollywood were blacklisted merely because they were suspected of Communist sympathies.
Sympathy in Context
“If you want sympathy you’ll find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. Sympathy may pay well in the short term, but if you cash in on sympathy, it will take everything from you in the long run.”
Did You Know?
Borrowed from Middle French sympathie, from Late Latin sympathīa (“feeling in common”), from Ancient Greek σῠμπᾰ́θειᾰ (sŭmpắtheiă, “fellow feeling”), from σῠμπᾰθής (sŭmpăthḗs, “affected by like feelings; exerting mutual influence, interacting”) + -ῐᾰ (-ĭă, “-y”, nominal suffix). Equivalent to sym- (“acting or considered together”) + -pathy (“feeling”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sympathy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “sympathy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sympathy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
