Meaning & use
sympathy
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Meanings
noununcountable
A feeling of sorrow or concern for someone who is having a hard time.
Grammar: Uncountable; often with for: sympathy for the victims.
Patterns
- sympathy for someone
- express sympathy
We have great sympathy for the families.
She sent a card to express her sympathy.
He felt little sympathy for the cheat.
noununcountable
Support for or agreement with an idea or cause.
Grammar: Often with with or for: sympathy with the strikers.
Patterns
- sympathy with something
- in sympathy with someone
Many people had sympathy with the protest.
Workers stopped in sympathy with their colleagues.
He has no sympathy for such views.
nounpluralformal
Shared feelings or common understanding between people.
Grammar: Usually plural: sympathies.
Patterns
- someone's sympathies lie with something
My sympathies lie with the workers.
Her sympathies were with the underdog.
Political sympathies divided the family.
Word forms
| plural | sympathies |
|---|
Common combinations
- deepest sympathy
- Please accept our deepest sympathy.
- express sympathy
- She expressed sympathy to the family.
- sympathy card
- He sent a sympathy card.
- no sympathy
- I have no sympathy for him.
- sympathy vote
- He won a sympathy vote.
Synonyms and how they differ
- compassion
- Compassion adds a wish to help.
- pity
- Pity can be condescending.
- empathy
- Empathy is feeling what another feels.
- condolence
- Condolence is sympathy expressed at a death.
Opposites
Word family
- sympathize verb
- to show sympathy
- sympathetic adjective
- feeling or showing sympathy
- sympathizer noun
- a supporter of a cause
Commonly confused: sympathy or empathy?
sympathy vs empathy
Empathy means sharing someone's feelings, whereas sympathy is feeling sorry for them.
Practice
We offered our sympathy after the loss. We...
Choose one answer.
Sympathy is caring concern for someone's misfortune.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “sympathy”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.