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Affinity vs Sympathy - What's the difference?

affinity | sympathy |

As nouns the difference between affinity and sympathy

is that affinity is a natural attraction or feeling of kinship to a person or thing while sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.

affinity

English

Noun

(wikipedia affinity) (affinities)
  • A natural attraction or feeling of kinship to a person or thing.
  • A family relationship through marriage of a relative (e.g. sister-in-law), as opposed to consanguinity. (e.g. sister).
  • A kinsman or kinswoman of such relationship. Affinal kinsman or kinswoman.
  • The fact of and manner in which something is related to another.
  • * 1997 , Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault'', page 67, ''The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865):
    • A “signature” was placed on all things by God to indicate their affinities' — but it was hidden, hence the search for arcane knowledge. Knowing was '''guessing''' and ' interpreting , not observing or demonstrating.
  • Any romantic relationship.
  • Any passionate love for something.
  • (taxonomy) resemblances between biological populations; resemblances that suggest that they are of a common origin, type or stock.
  • (geology) structural resemblances between minerals; resemblances that suggest that they are of a common origin or type.
  • (chemistry) An attractive force between atoms, or groups of atoms, that contributes towards their forming bonds
  • (medicine) The attraction between an antibody and an antigen
  • (computing) tendency to keep a task running on the same processor in a symmetric multiprocessing operating system to reduce the frequency of cache misses
  • (geometry) An automorphism of affine space.

    • Derived terms

    * affinity card * affinity fraud * affinity reagent * microaffinity

    sympathy

    English

    (wikipedia sympathy)

    Noun

    (sympathies)
  • A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.
  • The ability to share the feelings of another.
  • A mutual relationship between people or things such that they are correspondingly affected by any condition.
  • * 1997 , Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault'', page 67, ''The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)
    • 'Sympathy' likened anything to anything else in universal attraction, e.g. the fate of men to the course of the planets.
  • Tendency towards or approval of the aims of a movement.

    • Usage notes

    * Used similarly to empathy, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, (term) is stronger and more intimate, while sympathy is weaker and more distant; see .

    Antonyms

    * contempt (context-dependent)

    Derived terms

    * (l) * (l) * (l), (l)