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Generosity vs Sympathy - What's the difference?

generosity | sympathy |

As nouns the difference between generosity and sympathy

is that generosity is the trait of being willing to donate money and/or time while sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.

generosity

English

Noun

  • (uncountable) The trait of being willing to donate money and/or time.
  • * 1963 : Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society
  • We have mentioned generosity as an outstanding virtue required in Sioux life.
  • (uncountable) Acting generously.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)
  • , volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.}}
  • (uncountable) The trait of being abundant, more than adequate.
  • (literally, uncountable) Good breeding; nobility of stock.
  • (countable) A generous act.
  • * 1873 : Reverend M. C. Tyler, Proceedings at the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Sage College of the Cornell University
  • May the generosities of the founders of these halls, be rewarded by the fair and holy characters which shall be here formed.

    Synonyms

    * liberality * nobility

    Antonyms

    * stinginess

    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)