Sympathetic
/ˌsɪmpəˈθɛtɪk/adjective
Sharing another's feeling, and in anatomy belonging to the nerve chain that readies the body for exertion.
The Greek roots
Literally: “feeling with”
The story of the word
συμπάθεια in Greek medicine and Stoic physics meant that parts of a body, or of the cosmos, act on each other at a distance without touching. Anatomists kept both the idea and the word, and the chain of ganglia running beside the spine was called sympathetic because it seemed to make distant organs move in concert. The everyday sense is the same compound read morally, and it has an exact Latin twin in compassion, built piece for piece from the same two meanings.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
Sympathetic activity is what dilates the pupil before a fight or a first date.
Pluck one string and its sympathetic neighbour sounds on its own.