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Regret vs Sympathize - What's the difference?

regret | sympathize |

As verbs the difference between regret and sympathize

is that regret is to feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened), afterthink: to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead while sympathize is to show sympathy; to be affected by feelings similar to those of another, in consequence of knowing the person to be thus affected.

As a noun regret

is emotional pain on account of something done or experienced in the past, with a wish that it had been different; a looking back with dissatisfaction or with longing.

regret

English

(wikipedia regret)

Verb

(regrett)
  • To feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened), afterthink: to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead.
  • *
    • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.}}
  • (more generally) To feel sorry about (any thing).

    • Usage notes

    This is a catenative verb that takes the gerund (the (-ing) form), except in set phrases with tell, say, and inform, where the to infinitive is used. See

    Derived terms

    * regretter

    Noun

  • Emotional pain on account of something done or experienced in the past, with a wish that it had been different; a looking back with dissatisfaction or with longing.
  • * Macaulay
    • What man does not remember with regret the first time he read Robinson Crusoe ?
  • * Clarendon
    • Never any prince expressed a more lively regret for the loss of a servant.
  • * Washington Irving
    • From its peaceful bosom [the grave] spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
  • (obsolete) Dislike; aversion.

    • See also

    * remorse * repentance

    External links

    * * ----

    sympathize

    English

    Verb

    (North America)
  • To show sympathy; to be affected by feelings similar to those of another, in consequence of knowing the person to be thus affected.
  • * Addison
    • Their countrymen sympathized with their heroes in all their adventures.
  • To have a common feeling, as of bodily pleasure or pain.
  • * Buckminster
    • The mind will sympathize so much with the anguish and debility of the body, that it will be too distracted to fix itself in meditation.
  • To agree; to be in accord; to harmonize.
    • (Dryden)

    Usage notes

    Used similarly to empathize, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, (term) is stronger and more intimate, while sympathize is weaker and more distant; see . Further, the general “agree, accord” sense of sympathize is not shared with (term).