sympathize
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Forms: form: sympathizes
form: sympathizing
form: sympathized
form: sympathized
form: sympathise
Etymology: Borrowed from French sympathiser. By surface analysis, sympathy + -ize. Displaced native Old English efnþrōwian (literally “to suffer with or together”).
Senses: examples: text: […] 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.
ref: 2025 December 5 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “FRIDAY, November 24, 2025”, in The Spectator, number 273; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume I, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:
text: 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.
ref: 1868–1869, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter 19, in Little Women: […], (please specify |part=1 or 2), Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, →OCLC:
text: “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.”
ref: 1875, Anthony Trollope, chapter 19, in The Way We Live Now, London: Chapman and Hall, […]:
text: The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised voices.
ref: 1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter 3, in The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1953, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 52:
synonyms: commiserate
understand
glosses: 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
examples: text: ‘[…] 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. […]’
ref: 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 31, in North and South:
text: “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. […]”
ref: 1919, Saki, “The Threat”, in The Toys of Peace and Other Papers, London: John Lane, page 150:
text: […] naturally the British aristocracy sympathized with the Confederacy, as one aristocrat with another, against a race of dollar lovers like the Yankees.
ref: 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:
text: He’d go to […] Soviet Russia—now giving us the whole story, that he sympathized with the Reds and admired Lenin […]
ref: 1953 September 18, Saul Bellow, chapter III, in The Adventures of Augie March […], New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →OCLC, pages 41-42:
text: 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?
ref: 2014, Norm Macdonald Live, season 2, episode 9, spoken by Norm Macdonald:
glosses: To support, favour, have sympathy (with a political cause or movement, a side in a conflict / in an action).
examples: text: “How much he slapped my sons—you should see their swollen faces, Panditji,” said Dukhi. […]
“Poor children,” sympathized Pandit Lallaram.
ref: 1995, Rohinton Mistry, chapter 3, in A Fine Balance, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, page 133:
glosses: To say in an expression of sympathy.
examples: text: […] 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.
ref: 1814, J. S. Buckminster, Sermons, Boston, Sermon 3, p. 55:
glosses: To have a common feeling, as of bodily pleasure or pain.
examples: text: 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.
ref: c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
glosses: To share (a feeling or experience).
examples: text: 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.
ref: 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[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:
text: It was the Winter wilde.
While the Heav’n-born-childe,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies:
Nature in aw to him
Had doff't her gawdy trim,
With her great Maſter ſo to ſympathize:
It was no ſeaſon then for her
To wanton with the Sun her luſty Paramour.
ref: 1646 (indicated as 1645), John Milton, “On the Morning of Christs Nativity”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […], London: […] Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Mosely, […], →OCLC, page 2:
text: 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:
ref: 1695, Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, London: W. Rogers, page 175:
text: 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 […]
ref: 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], chapter 8, in Wuthering Heights: […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby, […], →OCLC:
glosses: To agree; to be in accord; to harmonize.
Derived terms: sympathizer
sympathizingly
Related terms: sympathetic
sympathy