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Ruth vs Sympathy - What's the difference?

ruth | sympathy |

As a proper noun ruth

is a book of the old testament and the hebrew tanakh.

As a noun sympathy is

a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.

ruth

English

Noun

(-)
  • (archaic) Sorrow for the misery of another; pity, compassion; mercy.
  • *, II.11:
    • It was my fortune to be at Rome'', upon a day that one ''Catena , a notorious high-way theefe, was executed: at his strangling no man of the companie seemed to be mooved to any ruth .
  • * 1847 , , (Jane Eyre) , Chapter IV, 1859, New York, Harper & Brothers, page 14:
    • under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth .
  • * 2011 , Turisas (Mathias Nygård), Hunting Pirates
    • Scum they are! —Foe of mankind!
    Clear the sea! —Show no ruth !
  • * 1896 , , (A Shropshire Lad)'', XLIV, 2005, ''The Works of A. E. Housman'' [1994, ''The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman ], page 61,
    • Now to your grave shall friend and stranger / With ruth and some with envy come.
  • * ~1937 , J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fall of Arthur
    • He mourned too late
    In ruth for the rending of the Round Table.
  • (obsolete) Sorrow; misery; distress.
  • (obsolete) Something which causes regret or sorrow; a pitiful sight.

    • Derived terms

    * ruthful * ruthless

    Anagrams

    *

    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)