empathy

UK/ˈɛmpəθi/US/ˈɛmpəθi/

nounB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,807 of 15,258neutral

Empathy is feeling what another person feels, from the inside. Your friend describes the moment the phone rang and your own stomach drops — that is empathy, not politeness.

Keep it apart from sympathy. Sympathy is feeling for someone, sorry from a safe distance; empathy is feeling with them, standing where they are standing. The verb is empathize (or empathise) and it takes WITH: you empathize with someone, never empathize someone. Both adjectives are in use, empathetic and empathic. You will meet the word most in talk about nursing, teaching, parenting and design, where it means the deliberate work of imagining another person's experience rather than a feeling that simply arrives.

Definitions of empathy

1nounempathyThe ability to feel and understand what another person is feeling, as if from inside their experience.B2+
“Good nurses need empathy as much as skill.”
synonyms: fellow feeling, understanding

empathy is an emotional ability.

Where it comes from

Empathy is barely a century old. The psychologist Edward Bradford Titchener coined it in 1909 to translate German Einfühlung, reaching for Ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια — ἐν, 'in', plus πάθος, 'feeling'. The strange part is what became of the Greek word itself: modern εμπάθεια means close to the opposite, strong ill feeling and prejudice against someone.

German
Einfühlung
Ancient Greek
ἐμπάθεια
English, today
empathy

Built from

ἐν · Ancient Greek — in, at
πάθος · Ancient Greek — feeling

A twentieth-century borrowing from Ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια literally “passion” (formed from ἐν (“in, at”) + πάθος (“feeling”)), equivalent to em- + -pathy, coined by Edward Bradford Titchener in 1909 to translate German Einfühlung. The modern word in Greek εμπάθεια has an opposite meaning denoting strong negative feelings and prejudice against someone.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Feelings & Character, A Man Called Ove, Moods & Relationships, Mental Health & Wellbeing

First appears in chapter 30 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

empathy in the wild

However, there are other (sometimes conflicting) definitions of empathy that include but are not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others.
Empathy
According to the theory, a lack of ToM is considered equivalent to a lack of both cognitive and affective empathy.
Mind-blindness
The Empathy Quotient (EQ) is a psychological self-report measure of empathy developed by Simon Baron-Cohen and Sally Wheelwright at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge.
Empathy quotient
EQ is based on a definition of empathy that includes cognition and affect.
Empathy quotient

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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