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sympathise

verbB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #11,913 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: sympathised, sympathising, sympathises

To sympathise is to share and show sorrow for somebody's trouble. Sympathise with her, hard to sympathise, I do sympathise.

It is different from empathise: to sympathise is to feel for somebody, while to empathise is to feel with them. Americans spell it sympathize, and the word also means to agree with a cause, as in a sympathiser.

Definitions of sympathise

  1. 1verbsympathiseTo share and show sorrow for somebody's trouble.B2+

    “I sympathise with you; losing a pet is always hard.”

sympathise is a feeling.

Also accepted in games: sympathize

Where it comes from

French sympathiser comes from Greek sympatheia, fellow feeling, from syn, with, plus pathos, feeling.

  1. French

    sympathiser

  2. English, today

    sympathise

French sympathiser. by surface analysis, sympathy + -ise.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

sympathise in the wild

  • After spending a fortnight hunting him in the British Museum, I have come to sympathise with Clavers and his dragoons.

    John Welsh of Irongray

  • During his time as a Socialist, he was known to sympathise with the left of the party, and was close to Henri Emmanuelli.

    Liêm Hoang-Ngoc

  • By the time the painting was completed she was a conventional member of early Victorian society although she continued to sympathise with liberal causes.

    Portrait of Mary Shelley

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.

Related words

  • sympathy