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Comment by thisisweirdok | Hacker News Reader

Empathy is understanding, sympathy is recognition.

If I stub my toe you don't have to feel that pain to empathize it, you have to understand what it feels like to suddenly be in pain. Sympathy in that situation would only require recognizing and pitying someone who is in pain, without necessarily understanding it.

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The word empathy was originally understold to mean actually feeling the pain of someone else in pain. Sympathy had the meaning you ascribe to empathy: understanding intellectually that the person in pain is having a tough. That the words take on ever extravagant meanings indicates that theyve become so cliche as to be meaningless.

I'm not talking about an intellectual understanding, I'm talking about emotional understanding. Sympathy is intellectual understanding (i.e., recognition), but is not emotional understanding.

Emotional understanding means feeling the emotions of the other. If you do not feel what the other is feeling yourself, then you simply have an intellectual appreciation, which you agree is sympathy. Don't take my word for it.

Merriam-webster defines empathy(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy):

> the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings,

Notice the 'and vicariously experiencing'. If there is no experience, it is not empathy. Stop using the word to mean something it is simply not.

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