Sympathies

How to spell sympathies

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sympathies

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sympathies mean?

1. nounFeelings of compassion, sorrow, or shared emotion expressed toward someone, often after a loss.

Sympathies in a sentence

• The crowd's sympathies lay firmly with the injured player's team.

• The manager extended his sympathies to the staff who had lost their colleague.

Where does sympathies come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek sympatheia, which literally meant 'fellow feeling' or 'suffering together', built from syn 'together, with' and pathos 'feeling, suffering'. The Greek term passed into Latin as sympathia and then into English in the late 1500s, by way of French, originally describing an affinity or natural agreement between things. Over time the sense narrowed toward sharing in another person's emotions, especially their sorrow, which is why we now send our 'sympathies' to the bereaved. The same pathos root sits inside a whole family of English words, including empathy, pathetic, and apathy, and recognising that path means 'feeling' is the key to spelling the middle of this word correctly. The plural form gathers up the many feelings of compassion offered on a sad occasion, and the -ies ending follows the regular English rule of changing a final -y to -ies.

How the word is built

• sym- (together, with)
• path (feeling, suffering)
• -y (noun-forming suffix)
• -es (plural)