Empathy vs Empath - What's the difference?
empathy | empath |
the intellectual identification of the thoughts, feelings, or state of another person
capacity to understand another person's point of view or the result of such understanding
(parapsychology, science fiction) a paranormal ability to psychically read another person's emotions
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
* 2005 , Catherine Asaro, Schism
* 2007 , Ellen Dugan, Natural Witchery
As nouns the difference between empathy and empath
is that empathy is the intellectual identification of the thoughts, feelings, or state of another person while empath is one who has the ability to sense emotions; someone who is empathic or practises empathy.empathy
English
Noun
(wikipedia empathy)- She had a lot of empathy for her neighbor; she knew what it was like to lose a parent too.
Usage notes
Used similarly to sympathy, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, empathy is stronger and more intimate, meaning that the subject understands and shares an emotion with the object – as in “I feel your pain” – while (term) is weaker and more distant – concern, but not shared emotion: “I care for you”.empath
English
Noun
(en noun)- 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.
- 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.
- The aura may, in fact, linger around objects or places and that "lingering energy" is what an empath senses and intuits.