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Sympathy vs Pathy - What's the difference?

sympathy | pathy |

As nouns the difference between sympathy and pathy

is that sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion while pathy is (informal) a therapy.

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)

    pathy

    English

    Noun

    (pathies)
  • (informal) A therapy
  • *1849 Journal of Health
  • **So, no doubt, it may be applied to hydropathy, and to every other sort of pathy''', and the result will be that every sort of '''pathy cures not all persons, but many persons...