Sympathy

How to spell sympathy

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce sympathy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does sympathy mean?

1. nounFeelings of pity, compassion, or shared sorrow for someone else's misfortune or suffering.

Sympathy in a sentence

• The whole office sent a card to express their sympathy after his loss.

• She listened with genuine sympathy as he described the difficult year.

Where does sympathy come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek sympatheia, which literally meant 'fellow feeling' or 'suffering together'. It was built from syn, meaning 'with' or 'together', and pathos, meaning 'feeling, suffering, or emotion'. Latin borrowed the term as sympathia, and it then passed through French before settling into English in the late 1500s, at first describing a kind of natural affinity or shared sensitivity between things. Over time the meaning narrowed toward the compassion we feel for another person's troubles. The same pathos root sits inside many relatives, including pathetic, empathy, and apathy, and remembering that path means 'feeling' helps fix the middle of the word; the tricky parts are the y after the opening sym and the soft 'th' spelled with the unstressed -thy ending.

How the word is built

• sym- (variant of syn-: with, together)
• path (from Greek pathos: feeling, suffering)
• -y (noun suffix)