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.
How to use it
This entry uses a noun. Follow the examples for articles and singular or plural forms; not every noun takes “a” or “an.”
Choose “Empathy” when the meaning fits your context: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person; imaginatively entering another's inner experience.
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.
Word in the Wild
Illustrative story: an imagined scene, not a documented event or interview.
She was a trained therapist and had been in the room with hundreds of people in difficulty. But the moment she described most often was not from a session. It was from a train.
A man across the aisle was on the phone with someone — she couldn't hear the words, only the specific quality of his voice. She knew, without being able to say why, that the news on the other end was bad. She knew the exact texture of what he was feeling.
She looked away and let him have his privacy. But she carried him for the rest of the day — not as a problem to solve, just as a presence. Someone else's pain, fully received, briefly held. This, she thought, is the whole of it.
Questions about this word
What does "Empathy" mean?
Empathy is noun meaning: Feeling what someone else feels, as if it were your own.. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person; imaginatively entering another's inner experience.
Which words express “realizing everyone has a full life”?
Empathy — Feeling what someone else feels, as if it were your own.
Where does the word "Empathy" come from?
From Greek empatheia — passion (em- 'in' + pathos 'feeling'). To feel inside. Introduced to psychology in the early 20th century to translate German Einfühlung.