Other forms: sympathies
Sympathy is what you feel when someone else is having a bad time and it moves you. A hand on a shoulder at a funeral, a friend who lets you talk for an hour about the job you did not get.
The plural means condolences: please accept our sympathies, a sympathy card, flowers sent with the family's sympathy. It takes FOR when you feel sorry — sympathy for the victims — and WITH when you partly agree, as in I have some sympathy with his argument. A strike called in sympathy is one that backs other workers, and has nothing to do with pity. Keep it apart from empathy: sympathy is feeling for someone from where you stand, empathy is feeling with them from inside their shoes. It can sting, too, which is why people say 'I do not want your sympathy' when the pity feels like being looked down on.
1nounsympathyThe feeling of being sorry for someone else's trouble.
“She had no sympathy left for him by then.”
synonyms: compassion, pity, commiseration
2nounsupportAgreement with, or support for, an idea, a cause or a group.
“He is in sympathy with the strikers even if he will not join them.”
synonyms: support, solidarity, approval
3nouncondolencesAn expression of sorrow to someone who has lost a person they loved.
“The card said only: with deepest sympathy.”
synonyms: condolences
sympathy is a feeling.
Sympathy came through Middle French sympathie from Latin sympathīa, 'feeling in common', and before that Ancient Greek συμπάθεια, 'fellow feeling'. Take it apart and it is sym-, together, with -pathy, feeling — the same -pathy that gives us empathy and apathy. Sympathy is, to the letter, feeling alongside someone.
Ancient Greek
σῠμπᾰ́θειᾰ — fellow feeling
Latin
sympathīa — feeling in common
Middle French
sympathie
English, today
sympathy
Middle French sympathie, from Latin sympathīa (“feeling in common”), from Ancient Greek σῠμπᾰ́θειᾰ (“fellow feeling”), from σῠμπᾰθής + -ῐᾰ. Equivalent to sym- + -pathy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA