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Empath vs Sympathy - What's the difference?

empath | sympathy |

As nouns the difference between empath and sympathy

is that empath is one who has the ability to sense emotions; someone who is empathic or practises empathy while sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.

empath

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • One who has the ability to sense emotions; someone who is empathic or practises empathy.
  • (science fiction, parapsychology) A person with extra-sensory empathic ability, capable of sensing the emotions of others around them in a way unexplained by conventional science and psychology.
  • * 1957 , Hans Stefan Santesson (editor), Fantastic Universe
    • She was the empath who would betray empaths if she got the chance. So they'd tried to fix things so that she didn't get the chance.
  • * 2005 , Catherine Asaro, Schism
    • How did a complete stranger know he was an empath ? He rarely if ever talked about it, even to his closest friends. It made people uneasy.
  • * 2007 , Ellen Dugan, Natural Witchery
    • The aura may, in fact, linger around objects or places and that "lingering energy" is what an empath senses and intuits.

    See also

    * telepath

    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)