Meaning & use
to empathize with someone
Last updated
Meaning
phraseintransitive
To understand and share the feelings of another person.
Grammar: No object; always followed by 'with' and the person: empathize with someone.
Patterns
- empathize with someone
- empathize with someone's situation
- empathize with how someone feels
Good therapists can empathize with their clients without judging them.
I try to empathize with my friend when she is upset.
It is hard to empathize with someone whose experiences are very different from yours.
Common combinations
- empathize with someone
- She found it easy to empathize with the new student.
- empathize with someone's pain
- He could empathize with her pain after losing his own father.
- find it hard to empathize
- Many people find it hard to empathize with strangers.
Synonyms and how they differ
- sympathize
- Sympathize means you feel sorry for someone's trouble, but you may not share their feelings; empathize means you actually understand and share them.
- understand
- Understand is more general and can be about facts or ideas; empathize is specifically about sharing feelings.
Opposites
Word family
- empathy noun
- The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
- empathetic adjective
- Showing empathy; able to understand others' feelings.
- empathize verb
- The base verb form, used with 'with'.
Commonly confused: to empathize with someone or sympathize?
to empathize with someone vs sympathize
Sympathize means to feel sorry for someone's misfortune, while empathize means to share and understand their feelings. They are often confused but not the same.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'empathize' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Empathize' is followed by 'with': empathize with someone. The other options use incorrect prepositions or no preposition.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “to empathize with someone”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.