sympathize

• sympathise (UK)

Borrowed from French sympathiser. By surface analysis, sympathy +‎ -ize. Displaced native Old English efnþrōwian (literally “to suffer with or together”).

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sympathize (third-person singular simple present sympathizes, present participle sympathizing, simple past and past participle sympathized) (Canada, US)

1. (intransitive) To have, show or express sympathy; to be affected by feelings similar to those of another, in consequence of knowing the person to be thus affected; to commiserate.
   • 2025 January 1 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “WEDNESDAY, December 21, 2024”, in The Spectator, number 273; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, , volume I, New York, N.Y.: D Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:

     […] the Authors having chosen for their Heroes Persons who were so nearly related to the People for whom they wrote. Achilles was a Greek, and Aeneas the remote Founder of Rome. By this Means their Countrymen (whom they principally proposed to themselves for their Readers) were particularly attentive to all the Parts of their Story, and sympathized with their Heroes in all their Adventures.

     The spelling has been modernized.

   • 1868–1869, Louisa M Alcott, chapter 19, in Little Women: , (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC:

     Some old people keep young at heart in spite of wrinkles and gray hairs, can sympathize with children’s little cares and joys, make them feel at home, and can hide wise lessons under pleasant plays, giving and receiving friendship in the sweetest way.

   • 1875, Anthony Trollope, chapter 19, in The Way We Live Now, London: Chapman and Hall, :

     “I can’t quite sympathise with your mother in all her feelings about this marriage, because I do not think that I recognise as she does the necessity of money.”

   • 1925, F Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 3, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 52:

     The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised voices.

2. (intransitive) To support, favour, have sympathy (with a political cause or movement, a side in a conflict / in an action).
   • 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 31, in North and South‎:

     ‘ […] who is to hunt up my witnesses? All of them are sailors, drafted off to other ships, except those whose evidence would go for very little, as they took part, or sympathised in the affair. […] ’

   • 1919, Saki, “The Threat”, in The Toys of Peace and Other Papers‎, London: John Lane, page 150:

     “Whether one sympathises with the agitation for female suffrage or not one has to admit that its promoters showed tireless energy and considerable enterprise in devising and putting into action new methods for accomplishing their ends. […] ”

   • 1936 June 30, Margaret Mitchell, chapter 9, in Gone with the Wind, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC; republished New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1944, →OCLC, part II, page 171:

     […] naturally the British aristocracy sympathized with the Confederacy, as one aristocrat with another, against a race of dollar lovers like the Yankees.

   • 1953, Saul Bellow, chapter 3, in The Adventures of Augie March, New York: Viking Press, →OCLC, pages 41-42:

     He’d go to […] Soviet Russia—now giving us the whole story, that he sympathized with the Reds and admired Lenin […]

   • 2014, Norm Macdonald Live, season 2, episode 9, spoken by Norm Macdonald:

     President Obama in a speech this past week said that we should solve the nation's bee problem. Oh, God, we elected a guy who sympathizes with bees?

3. (transitive) To say in an expression of sympathy.
   • 1995, Rohinton Mistry, chapter 3, in A Fine Balance‎, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, page 133:

     “How much he slapped my sons—you should see their swollen faces, Panditji,” said Dukhi. […]
     “Poor children,” sympathized Pandit Lallaram.

4. (intransitive) To have a common feeling, as of bodily pleasure or pain.
   • 1814, J. S. Buckminster, Sermons‎, Boston, Sermon 3, p. 55:

     […] the mind will sympathize so much with the anguish and debility of the body, that it will be […] too distracted to fix itself in meditation.

5. (transitive, obsolete) To share (a feeling or experience).
   • c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     And all that are assembled in this place,
     That by this sympathized one day’s error
     Have suffer’d wrong, go keep us company,
     And we shall make full satisfaction.

6. (intransitive) To agree; to be in accord; to harmonize.
   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, ”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     Henry V. The southern wind
     Doth play the trumpet to his purposes,
     And by his hollow whistling in the leaves
     Foretells a tempest and a blustering day.
     Henry IV. Then with the losers let it sympathize,
     For nothing can seem foul to those that win.

   • 1695, Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting‎, London: W. Rogers, page 175:

     Green, for example, is a pleasing Colour, which may come from a blue and a yellow mix’d together, and by consequence blue and yellow are two Colours which sympathize:

   • 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter 8, in Wuthering Heights: , volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, , →OCLC:

     Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration: he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness […]

Used similarly to empathize, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, empathize is stronger and more intimate, while sympathize is weaker and more distant. See empathy: usage notes.

Further, the general “agree, accord” sense of sympathize is not shared with empathize.

• sympathizer
• sympathizingly

• sympathetic
• sympathy