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Sympathy vs Scruple - What's the difference?

sympathy | scruple |

As nouns the difference between sympathy and scruple

is that sympathy is a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion while scruple is (obsolete) a weight of twenty grains; the third part of a dram.

As a verb scruple is

to be reluctant or to hesitate, as regards an action, on account of considerations of conscience or expedience.

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)

    scruple

    English

    (Webster 1913)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) A weight of twenty grains; the third part of a dram.
  • (obsolete) Hence, a very small quantity; a particle.
  • * Ca 1601–1608 , , As You Like It , Act II Scene 3 221–222
    • Paroles: I have not, my lord, deserved it.'' Lafeu: ''Yes, good faith, ev'ry dram of it, and I will not bate thee a scruple .
  • Hesitation as to action from the difficulty of determining what is right or expedient; unwillingness, doubt, or hesitation proceeding from motives of conscience.
    • He was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his scruples . - .
  • (obsolete) A doubt or uncertainty concerning a matter of fact; intellectual perplexity.
  • A measurement of time. Hebrew culture broke the hour into 1080 scruples.

    • Synonyms

    * (precise weight) * (small amount) see also .

    Derived terms

    * scrupulous * unscrupulous

    Verb

    (scrupl)
  • To be reluctant or to hesitate, as regards an action, on account of considerations of conscience or expedience.
    • We are often over-precise, scrupling to say or do those things which lawfully we may. - .
    Men scruple at the lawfulness of a set form of divine worship. - .
  • To regard with suspicion; to hesitate at; to question.
    • Others long before them ... scrupled more the books of hereties than of gentiles. - .
  • (obsolete) To doubt; to question; to hesitate to believe; to question the truth of (a fact, etc.).
    • I do not scruple to admit that all the Earth seeth but only half of the Moon.
  • To excite scruples in; to cause to scruple.
    • Letters which did still scruple many of them. -E. Symmons.

    External links

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    Anagrams

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