Empatheia

Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself. It may be described metaphorically as an emotional kind of resonance or mirroring.

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em·pa·thy (mp-th)

n.

1. Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives. See Synonyms at pity.

2. The attribution of one's own feelings to an object.

[en-² + -pathy (translation of German Einfühlung).]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Empathy n.

the ability to sense and understand someone else's feelings as if they were one's own [Greek empatheia affection, passion]

empathic adj

Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006

Empathy

the power of entering into another’s personality and imaginatively experiencing his feelings. — empathie, adj.

-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.