Empathetic means feeling what others feel as if from inside them. An empathetic listener, deeply empathetic, an empathetic response.
It is not the same as sympathetic: sympathy is feeling for somebody and empathy is feeling with them, and the difference matters in care work and in counselling. Empathic is the older form, and empathetic was reshaped to sound like sympathetic.
1adjectiveempatheticFeeling what others feel as if from inside them.
“The nurse was empathetic and seemed to understand exactly how frightened I was.”
empathetic is a quality.
Also accepted in games: empathic
From empathy, from Greek empatheia, feeling into. Empathetic was reshaped on the model of sympathetic.
Derived from empathic, modified to sound more similar to sympathetic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA