What's the difference between mercy and sympathy?

Mercy


Definition:

  • (n.) Forbearance to inflict harm under circumstances of provocation, when one has the power to inflict it; compassionate treatment of an offender or adversary; clemency.
  • (n.) Compassionate treatment of the unfortunate and helpless; sometimes, favor, beneficence.
  • (n.) Disposition to exercise compassion or favor; pity; compassion; willingness to spare or to help.
  • (n.) A blessing regarded as a manifestation of compassion or favor.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The law and justice minister, Anisul Huq, said the 73-year-old leader was hanged after he refused to seek mercy from the country’s president.
  • (2) But if May rushes headlong into a panicked triggering of article 50 without a clear idea of what she wants out of negotiations, she will have left us at the mercy of 27 countries who have heard little but table-thumping and empty threats from ministers.
  • (3) He called for care for the environment to be added to the seven spiritual works of mercy outlined in the Gospel that the faithful are asked to perform throughout the pope’s year of mercy in 2016.
  • (4) But Ruby Tweedie, another local resident, said: "There have been so many doubts about his guilt that it's only fair that the man, who has only a few months to live, should be shown mercy."
  • (5) Constant ribbing about his private life was compromising Deayton's position as the show's "holier-than-thou" host, who showed no mercy towards politicians or celebrities caught in a similar position, the corporation added.
  • (6) The 70-year-old describes a life of comfortable detachment from mainstream society, but with long periods in which he and his 74-year-old wife, Shin-yeol, are at the mercy of the elements.
  • (7) We're kind of at Mother Nature's mercy at this point," said Tom Kruschke, another fire department spokesman .
  • (8) Without him, we were at the mercy of increasingly nervous investors, and our Hollywood film-making future hung in the balance.
  • (9) Students of privatisation over the years have learnt to be grateful for small mercies.
  • (10) The mayor is a good person, but no one invited him, certainly not officially … The pope was furious.” While the prank provided fodder to critics of the mayor, it also underscored a more serious issue between the Vatican and Rome just a few months ahead of the church’s jubilee year of mercy, which begins on 8 December.
  • (11) The only mercy was they would have known little about it.
  • (12) After Hollande spent two hours on French radio in a patent relaunch of his presidency, a film producer announced that a biopic of Trierweiler’s revenge memoir, Merci Pour Ce Moment (Thank You For This Moment), is now in the works.
  • (13) Hunt replied: "Merci hopefully when consultation over we can have coffee like old days!"
  • (14) "The legal system has lost all sense of mercy and justice and it has been replaced with punitiveness and vindictiveness," Stinebrickner-Kauffman told Mail Online .
  • (15) If Whittingdale had any honour, any mercy, and any basic human decency, he would murder David Attenborough himself today, in his bed, to spare him any further suffering.
  • (16) It was not something that was talked about.” Thomson added: “It was mercifully quick and I remember first of all feeling surprise, then fear, then horror as I realised I quite simply couldn’t escape – because he was stronger than me, and there was no sense even initially of any sexual desire from him, which I suppose, looking back, again I find odd.” The MP said she had felt “absolutely numbed” and ashamed but told no one about the incident.
  • (17) Several survivors and family members of the victims who were flown to the US testified this week , and one cursed Bales for attacking villagers as some slept and others screamed for mercy.
  • (18) This meant that if the rebels started abusing people, the Misca would withdraw, leaving the civilian population at their mercy.
  • (19) Sitting in a side street listening to the sound of loud blasts and gunfire emanating from Nariman House, Rakash Bhaud, the local leader of the far-right Hindu party Shiv Sena, blamed the central government for the failures that, he said, had left them at the mercy of Pakistan-backed terrorists.
  • (20) More emphasis on mercy is needed in this case, surely, and less on killing.

Sympathy


Definition:

  • (n.) Feeling corresponding to that which another feels; the quality of being affected by the affection of another, with feelings correspondent in kind, if not in degree; fellow-feeling.
  • (n.) An agreement of affections or inclinations, or a conformity of natural temperament, which causes persons to be pleased, or in accord, with one another; as, there is perfect sympathy between them.
  • (n.) Kindness of feeling toward one who suffers; pity; commiseration; compassion.
  • (n.) The reciprocal influence exercised by the various organs or parts of the body on one another, as manifested in the transmission of a disease by unknown means from one organ to another quite remote, or in the influence exerted by a diseased condition of one part on another part or organ, as in the vomiting produced by a tumor of the brain.
  • (n.) That relation which exists between different persons by which one of them produces in the others a state or condition like that of himself. This is shown in the tendency to yawn which a person often feels on seeing another yawn, or the strong inclination to become hysteric experienced by many women on seeing another person suffering with hysteria.
  • (n.) A tendency of inanimate things to unite, or to act on each other; as, the sympathy between the loadstone and iron.
  • (n.) Similarity of function, use office, or the like.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Hulk Hogan’s status as a public figure, even one who holds forth often and at length about his sex life, may have kept him from getting the kind of sympathy that the subject of the escort story immediately received, but there’s no evidence Bollea intended for anyone to see the tape.
  • (2) Former Tory minister Edwina Currie has tweeted that she had "no sympathy" for food bank users, that they were just "opportunists".
  • (3) With Fury, I’m not going to have no remorse, I’m not going to have no sympathy.
  • (4) I have no quarrel with the overall thrust of Andrew Rawnsley's argument that the south-east is over-dominant in the UK economy and, as someone who has lived and worked both in Cardiff and Newcastle upon Tyne, I have sympathy with the claims of the north-east of England as well as Wales (" No wonder the coalition hasn't many friends in the north ", Comment).
  • (5) He added: “I have no sympathy for real paedophiles.
  • (6) But obviously if people have been injured or indeed killed that is a tragedy and our sympathies are with the victims and their families.” He added: “We never condone violence – whatever the cause.
  • (7) A Facebook page created for friends, family and well-wishers to write messages of sympathy was filling with tributes.
  • (8) Kafka's faceless and amoral heroes, on the other hand, inspire no sympathy at all.
  • (9) There was little sympathy from the Lib Dems' coalition partners in the Conservative party.
  • (10) A year after the establishment of the so-called caliphate by Islamic State , western governments are struggling for strategies to challenge sympathy among their citizens towards the militants.
  • (11) You could think the narrator's extreme failures of sympathy are despicable, but this would surely be beside the point.
  • (12) Its coverage was so vindictive and blatantly unfair that it succeeded in winning sympathy for the prime minister, not an easy thing to do these days.
  • (13) The curator Clare Browne has a certain sympathy for Bock – “he was a serious collector, and he saved many pieces which would otherwise certainly have been destroyed” – but even she is startled that he ran his scissors straight through the figure of Christ, sparing only the face, which ended up in the V&A’s half.
  • (14) Speaking at a press conference following the preview of his latest film, Melancholia, von Trier expressed sympathy for Hitler, remarked that Israel was "a pain in the arse" and jokingly confessed to being a Nazi .
  • (15) The Labour leader is determined to retain autonomy on policy and to avoid being dictated to by his party when he is not in sympathy with the message it is giving him.
  • (16) Too many of his answers start with, “I have some sympathy with what you say, but...”; he comes across as just another politician.
  • (17) He has little sympathy for those displaced along the way.
  • (18) This includes the carbon content of fuels, driver behaviour, infrastructure, as well as the potential of car connectivity and intelligent transport systems (ITS).” The industry’s position has won the sympathy of oil companies, which also oppose fuel economy targets for 2025 and 2030.
  • (19) "I've got a great deal of sympathy with the situationist position.
  • (20) Perhaps monstering earns underdog sympathy, with contempt for the press as rife as contempt for conventional politics.