sympathy

1. 1.

   an inclination to support or be loyal to or to agree with an opinion

   “his sympathies were always with the underdog”

   “I knew I could count on his understanding”

   Synonymsunderstanding

   Broaderinclination
2. 2.

   sharing the feelings of others (especially feelings of sorrow or anguish)

   Synonymsfellow feeling

   Broaderfeeling

   Narrowerconcernkindheartednesscompassioncommiserationcompatibilityempathy
3. 3.

   a relation of affinity or harmony between people; whatever affects one correspondingly affects the other

   “the two of them were in close sympathy”

   Broaderaffinity

   Narrowermutual understanding

Other forms of sympathy

plural

sympathies·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about sympathy

What does sympathy mean?

sympathy means "an inclination to support or be loyal to or to agree with an opinion". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in sympathy?

sympathy has 3 syllables: sym-pa-thy. The stress falls on "sym". In IPA it is /ˈsɪmpəθi/.

What is another word for sympathy?

Close synonyms include understanding, fellow feeling. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is sympathy a common word?

sympathy is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.