Sympathy and empathy are two different one of those terms, who makes people mostly confused. Many people aren’t cleared with their meanings. Word ‘sympathy’ means feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. The word ’empathy’ means the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SYMPATHY AND EMPATHY:-
Here are some common differences between Sympathy and empathy.
DEFINITION: According to Merriam Webster sympathy can be defined as “an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other, is called sympathy”. OR “inclination to think or feel alike: emotional or intellectual accord “.
Again according to Merriam Webster empathy can be defined as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner”. OR “understanding or experiencing someone else’s emotions or experiences as if they were your own, or as a shared experience”
EXAMPLE: Some examples for sympathy are as follows:
- In 2007, everyone felt sympathy for the victims of the earthquake.
- My sympathies are with you on the loss of your health.
- In 2014, whole Pakistani public felt sympathy for the victims of APS.
- We help our neighbors as they cannot afford their expenses.
- Accept my condolences on the loss of your brother.
- The old man was facing difficulty to cross the road, so I held his hand and helped him to cross the road safely.
Some of the examples of empathy are as follows:
- I feel empathy for the snatching of your cell phone because I have also faced the same few days ago.
- You can totally understand the restrictions on me as you face the same from your family.
- I didn’t reject him because I knew the feeling of rejection when once I was rejected.
- She has already faced the pain of labor that’s why she knows how to make me mentally prepared for it.
- Only he knows my feeling of getting failed in exams because he also got failed previously.
- I know that how does it feel to see your beloved with someone else, as I also faced the same.
So these above are the situations which are showing the acts of sympathy and empathy.
EXPLANATION: The act of sympathy can be explained as it is shown for some general things. The person doing sympathy with someone can be with or without understanding. They do that because they have heard that it feels bad in such kind of situations. They have never experienced the thing personally. So it can be said that sympathy is something which can be felt by everyone as it is due to very general situations. Like everyone making an assignment especially Australian student make Australian assignment .
Knows that it feels bad on the death of some beloved. That’s why everyone shows sympathies with every other person on the death of someone’s beloved.
The act of empathy can be explained as personal/individual act. Empathy is an understood act when a person does empathy to someone; it means that he has personally experienced it. He knows what exactly the other person feels in such situation, just because he himself has been one or more into the same situation before. Like only a mother knows the pain of labor so only a mother can understand other mother’s pain.
PLURAL FORMS: A sympathy is a singular form while the plural form of sympathy is sympathies. Empathy is also a singular form while the the plural form of empathy is empathies.
To summarize the differences between sympathy and empathy. We can say that Sympathy is something which involves shared feelings, pity for other person’s pain, shared interest and opinion, and expression through language. While empathy is something that involves not only shared feelings and pity for other person’s pain but also shared experience, shared understanding and occurrence even without language.
Empathy is often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes”, or experiencing the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself, a sort of emotional resonance.
Sympathy…implies a degree of equal feeling, that is, the sympathizer views the matter similarly to how the person themselves does. It thus implies concern, or care or a wish to alleviate negative feelings others are experiencing.
— Wikipedia
GRAMMAR GUIDE
SYMPATHY: According to means of grammar, sympathy is a noun, sympathized is a verb (used without object), sympathizingly and non-sympathizingly are the adverb. Expressing sympathy (with) is an adjective. e.g.
- I feel sympathy for you (noun),
- I sympathized with you (verb),
- I treated you sympathizingly (adverb),
- My sympathies are with you (the sentence shows adjective).
EMPATHY: According to means of grammar empathy itself is a noun, empathize is a verb, empathizing is an adverb, expressing empathy (with) is an adjective. e.g.:
- She feels sympathy for him. (noun)
- She sympathized with him. (verb)
- She talked to him empathizing. (adverb)
- She expressed her empathy with him. (adjective)
