empathy

English

Etymology

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

Noun

Wikipedia empathy (countable and uncountable; plural empathies)

1. the intellectual identification of the thoughts, feelings, or state of another person
2. capacity to understand another person's point of view or the result of such understanding

   She had a lot of empathy for her neighbor; she knew what it was like to lose a parent too.

3. (parapsychology, science fiction) a paranormal ability to psychically read another person's emotions

Related terms

• sympathy

Translations

intellectual identification

• Bulgarian: съпричастие (bg) (sǎpričastie) n
• Catalan: empatia (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 移情 (cmn) (yíqíng), 同感 (cmn) (tónggǎn)

• Esperanto: empatio (eo)
• Finnish: empatia (fi)
• French: empathie (fr) f
• Greek: ενσυναίσθηση (el) (ensynaísthisi) f

• Hebrew: אמפתיה (he)
• Polish: empatia (pl)
• Portuguese: empatia (pt) f
• Romanian: empatie (ro) n
• Scottish Gaelic: co-fhaireachdainn m, iochd m
• Spanish: empatía (es) f
• Turkish: empati (tr)

capacity to understand another person's point of view

• Catalan: empatia (ca) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 移情 (cmn) (yíqíng), 同感 (cmn) (tónggǎn)

• Danish: empati (da)
• German: Einfühlungsvermögen (de) n

• Greek: κατανόηση (el) (katanóisi) f, συμπάθεια (el) (sumpátheia) f
• Icelandic: hluttekning (is) f
• Portuguese: empatia (pt) f
• Romanian: empatie (ro) f
• Scottish Gaelic: co-fhaireachdainn m, iochd m