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Charity vs Sympathy - What's the difference?

charity | sympathy | Related terms |

As nouns the difference between charity and sympathy

is that charity is   Christian love; representing God's love of man, man's love of God, or man's love of his fellow-men while sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.

As a proper noun Charity

is {{given name|female|from=English}}.

charity

English

Noun

  • (archaic)  Christian love; representing God's love of man, man's love of God, or man's love of his fellow-men.
  • In general, an attitude of kindness and understanding towards others, now especially suggesting generosity.
    • Judge thyself with the judgment of sincerity, and thou will judge others with the judgment of charity . — John Mitchell Mason
  • (uncountable)  Benevolence to others less fortunate than ourselves; the providing of goods or money to those in need.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
    • , chapter=6 citation , passage=‘[…] I remember a lady coming to inspect St. Mary's Home where I was brought up and seeing us all in our lovely Elizabethan uniforms we were so proud of, and bursting into tears all over us because “it was wicked to dress us like charity children”. […]’.}}
  • (countable)  The goods or money given to those in need.
  • (countable)  An organization, the objective of which is to carry out a charitable purpose.

    • Synonyms

    * (organization) charitable organization

    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)