Empathy

//ˈɛmpəθi// noun, slang

noun, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person. countable, uncountable

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

  2. 2
    understanding and entering into another's feelings wordnet
  3. 3
    The capacity to understand another person's point of view or the result of such understanding. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    A paranormal ability to psychically read another person's emotions. countable, uncountable
  5. 5
    MDMA. countable, obsolete, slang, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
accentaccentuationaccordaccordanceaffinityagape

Antonyms

All antonyms
apathy

Example

More examples

"Nothing is more important than empathy."

Etymology

A twentieth-century borrowing from Ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια (empátheia, literally “passion”) (formed from ἐν (en, “in, at”) + πάθος (páthos, “feeling”)), equivalent to em- + -pathy, coined by Edward Bradford Titchener in 1909 to translate German Einfühlung. The modern word in Greek εμπάθεια (empátheia) has an opposite meaning denoting strong negative feelings and prejudice against someone.

Related phrases

cold empathydouble empathy problemempathy bellyempathy maphot empathypseudo-empathysuicidal empathypoint of view

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Emotional Intelligence Language

Vocabulary for feedback, conflict repair, and trust-building conversations.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.