Empathy
noun /ˈempəθi/ — Feeling what someone else feels, as if it were your own.
Definition
The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person; imaginatively entering another's inner experience.
Beyond the definition
One of the most searched and most misunderstood words in modern life. Empathy is not sympathy — sympathy is feeling for someone, empathy is feeling with them. It requires temporarily inhabiting another perspective. It's effortful, and rare.
Origin & history
From Greek empatheia — passion (em- 'in' + pathos 'feeling'). To feel inside. Introduced to psychology in the early 20th century to translate German Einfühlung.
Example sentences
Illustrative sentences for learning, not verified community posts or sourced quotations.
Her empathy for her clients went beyond professional concern — she carried their worries home.
Good writing is an act of empathy — the author inhabits someone else's life.
Empathy isn't just kind; in negotiation, it's one of the most powerful tools you have.
Synonyms
compassion, understanding, sympathy, insight, fellow feeling
Antonyms
apathy, indifference, callousness
Related words
Empathy vs sympathy
Sympathy is feeling for someone — acknowledging their pain from your own position, with warmth and concern. Empathy is feeling with someone — imaginatively inhabiting their perspective as if from the inside. Sympathy keeps you in your own experience; empathy briefly transports you into theirs. You can sympathise without understanding; empathy requires entering the other person's reality. Both are expressions of care, but empathy is the more demanding and more precise form.
Compare this word
Word in the Wild
See how this word appears in life, language and stories.
Illustrative sentences and imagined stories for learning — not verified sightings, interviews, or sourced quotations.
Fictional scene
Clinician listening to patient's heart
A clinician listens to a patient’s chest with a stethoscope, the patient sitting calmly in a quiet room.
The clinician’s attentive focus on the patient’s inner state captures the act of trying to understand someone else's physical and, by extension, internal experience through careful, quiet observation.
Image credit: Wordspun · AI-generated conceptual illustration