Sympathize

How to spell sympathize

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sympathize

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sympathize mean?

1. verbTo feel or express understanding and compassion for someone else's situation or feelings.

Sympathize in a sentence

• The manager tried to sympathize with the staff who lost their bonuses.

• Many readers sympathize with parents juggling work and childcare.

Where does sympathize come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek sympatheia, which combined syn, meaning 'together' or 'with', and pathos, meaning 'feeling' or 'suffering'. The literal idea was a shared feeling, a state of suffering or being moved alongside another person. The notion passed into Latin as sympathia and then into French as sympathie before English took up the related verb form in the late 1500s. The classical pathos root is the same one buried in 'pathetic', 'empathy', and 'apathy', so the central 'path' inside sympathize is the part worth anchoring in memory. The ending settled as -ize from the Greek verb suffix -izein, which is why both the British -ize and the -ise variants exist for the word today.

How the word is built

• sym- (together, with)
• path (feeling, suffering)
• -ize (verb-forming suffix)

British and American spelling

Sympathize is the American spelling. British English spells it sympathise.