Patho-, -Pathy Feeling Words: “anthropopathy” to “unsympathetic”
Part 1 of 1.
Feeling words that include: patho-, -path-, -pathia,
-pathic, -pathology, -pathetic, -pathize, -pathy
(Greek: feeling, sensation, perception; suffering).
In medicine, these elements usually mean “one who suffers from a disease of, or one who treats a disease” and they are listed separately from the “feeling” words shown on this page.
If you would like to take self-scoring quizzes over many of the words in this subject area, then go to
Patho- Quizzes so you can see how much you know about the following (and other) “
patho-” words.
anthropopathy, anthropopathism:
The attribution of human feelings to non humans; that is, to gods, lower animals or inanimate objects.
antipathy, antipathetic:
A strong feeling of aversion or repugnance against someone or something. The opposite of sympathy.
apathism:
Insensitivity, not feeling.
apathy, apathetic, apathetically:
1. Lack of interest or concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal; indifference.
2. Freedom from, or insensibility to, suffering; hence, freedom from or insensibility to passion or feeling; passionless existence. From 1847 Lewes Hist. Philos., “Apathy was considered by the Stoics as the highest condition of Humanity.”
3. Indolence of mind, indifference to what is calculated to move the feelings, or to excite interest or action.
cenesthopathy:
Any localized distortion of body awareness, such as the feeling that a hand has become like jelly; less commonly the term is used to refer to a feeling of general physical ill-being.
dyspathy, dyspathic:
The opposite of sympathy; antipathy, aversion, dislike; disagreement of feeling or sentiment.
empathy, empathetic, empathist, empathize:
Identification with and understanding of another's feelings, situation, and motives; attribution of one's own feelings to an object.
Empathy was apparently borrowed in 1904 from Greek empátheia, passion (em-, in plus páthos, feeling). It was a translation of the German Einfühlung (ein; in plus Fühlung, feeling), a word which was introduced in 1903 by the German philosopher and psychologist, Theodore Lipps, who originated the theory of aesthetic empathy (that art appreciation depends on the viewer's ability to project his personality into the object).
—Based on information from
The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology,
edited by Robert K. Barnhart.
Empathy is when another person strikes it rich and you feel as if it’s money in YOUR pocket.
—Anonymous
eupathy, eupathic:
A happy condition of the soul.
heteropathy, heteropathic:
1. An abnormal sensitivity to stimuli.
2. Antipathy or aversion excited by suffering; opposite of sympathy.
hieropathic:
Pertaining to a love of, or strong feeling for, the clergy.
homopathy:
Sameness of feeling; sympathy.
inapathy:
Feeling, sensibility; the absence of or opposite of apathy.
panpathy:
A feeling common to all or everyone.
pathetic, pathetically:
1. Of, relating to, expressing, or arousing pity, sympathy, or tenderness; inadequate, pitiful; such as, a pathetic attempt at playing basketball.
2. Affecting or exciting emotion; originally, moving emotions or passions; stirring; now, specifically, arousing the tender emotions, especially pity, sorrow, sympathy, melancholy; affecting, often to tears.
3. Sometimes, in a weakened sense, exciting pity and amusement; as, to hear a pathetic story; to see a pathetic scene; to present a pathetic appearance.
Pathetic is the condition of the man who knows it all but has no one to tell it to.
—Evan Esar
pathetic fallacy:
The attribution of human feelings or qualities to inanimate nature, often thought of as a device producing false emotionalism.
pathopoeia:
A speech, figure of speech, or rhetorical device aimed to stimulate the passions.
pathos:
A quality that arouses feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow; a feeling of sympathy or pity. Pathos and pity have in common the idea of tender emotion aroused by suffering or distress.
Pathos is a quality, as in literature and art, that arouses feelings of pity or sorrow. Bathos is the sudden shift in speech or writing from a lofty level to a commonplace one, for contrast or humor, or overdone sentiment that has become melodramatic or maudlin: “The actors played the old tear-jerker for bathos and received many laughs.”
protopathic:
Stimuli and nerve systems concerned with sensation of pain and of marked variations in temperature.
somnipathy, somnipathist:
1. Sleep from sympathy (a reference to the influence exerted by one individual upon another, or received by one from another, and the effects thus produced, as seen in hypnotism, and in yawning) or by the process of mesmerism.
2. A state of sleep induced by hypnosis or mesmerism.
sympathy, sympathize, sympathizer:
1. Sharing of a compassion for another person’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
2. An influence produced in any organ by disease or disorder in another part.
3. A relation which exists between the mind and the body, causing the one to be affected by the other.
Sympathy
1. What a girl offers to another in exchange for details.
2. A quality that’s never wasted except when you give it to yourself.
3. What you give to someone when you don’t want to loan him/her any money.
—Based on quotes by Evan Esar
sympathism, sympathist:
1. Susceptibility to hypnotic influence; suggestibility.
2. The alleged transfer of feelings from one person to another.
sympathetic:
1. Pertaining to, caused by, or exhibiting sympathy.
2. A sympathetic nerve or the sympathetic nervous system (a set or series of interconnected or interdependent parts of entities, objects, organs, or organisms) that function together in a common purpose or produce results impossible of achievement by one of them acting or operating alone.
telepathy, telepathic, telepathically, telepathist, telepathize:
Extrasensory perception of the mental activity of another person; communication through means other than the normal senses, as by the exercise of mystical powers.
theopathy, theopathetic:
1. Sympathetic passive feeling excited by the contemplation of God; susceptibility to this feeling.
2. Sensitiveness or responsiveness to divine influence; pious sentiment.
3. Religious emotion or excitement caused by contemplation of God.
unsympathetic, unsympathetically:
The opposite of sympathetic; without sympathy.
and four self-scoring quizzes are available so you can see how many of these words you know:
