What's the difference between pity and sympathy?

Pity


Definition:

  • (n.) Piety.
  • (n.) A feeling for the sufferings or distresses of another or others; sympathy with the grief or misery of another; compassion; fellow-feeling; commiseration.
  • (n.) A reason or cause of pity, grief, or regret; a thing to be regretted.
  • (v. t.) To feel pity or compassion for; to have sympathy with; to compassionate; to commiserate; to have tender feelings toward (any one), awakened by a knowledge of suffering.
  • (v. t.) To move to pity; -- used impersonally.
  • (v. i.) To be compassionate; to show pity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The voters don’t do gratitude, self-pitying politicians are wont to moan.
  • (2) With grievous amazement, never self-pitying but sometimes bordering on a sort of numbed wonderment, Levi records the day-to-day personal and social history of the camp, noting not only the fine gradations of his own descent, but the capacity of some prisoners to cut a deal and strike a bargain, while others, destined by their age or character for the gas ovens, follow "the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea".
  • (3) "); hopeless self-pity ("Nobody said anything to me about Billy ... all day long") and rage ("You want to put a bench in the park in Billy's name?
  • (4) Indeed, mainstream economics is a pitifully thin distillation of historical wisdom on the topics that it addresses.
  • (5) Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?” It is there to remind him that the dots are worth fighting for.
  • (6) Last year, Amnesty International described the world’s response as “pitiful” and earlier this week, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants called on the EU to deliver a proper resettlement programme.
  • (7) April's family had to endure the "spectacle of your hypocritical sympathy for their loss and of your tears", the judge told Bridger, saying any tears were motivated purely by self-pity.
  • (8) And this is the mainspring of so many of his stories, novellas, and his one novel, Beware of Pity : the clash between propriety and desire.
  • (9) It’s actually a pity that there’s now a break because I wanted to continue playing games,” said the Italian.
  • (10) In his final fight, against the journeyman boxer Kevin McBride, he was a pitiful figure - slumped in a corner, legs splayed, unable or unwilling to stand himself up.
  • (11) Other negative emotions – self-pity, guilt, apathy, pessimism, narcissism – make it a deeply unattractive illness to be around, one that requires unusual levels of understanding and tolerance from family and friends.
  • (12) He said it was a “pity” that the UK prime minister “wasn’t able to express the British position at the press conference with Donald Trump standing next to her”.
  • (13) As the turbulent commercial radio sector enters another new phase, Park wants to sweep away the thinking that has left too many of his colleagues wallowing in self-pity, and turn his fire on a familiar target.
  • (14) Broadly defined, this sort of behaviour involves procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, obstructionism, self-pity and a tendency to create chaotic situations.
  • (15) It is a pity we did not take our chances,” the Ukraine coach, Mykhailo Fomenko, said.
  • (16) "This depressing morning has now got me questioning my pitiful existence," sobs James Dodge.
  • (17) Foreign dignitaries were invited to attend for the first time and it is a pity that from Europe only Javier Solana chose to take the offer up.
  • (18) Men convicted of rape are often pitied in the media and, like Evans, quickly vault back to positions of fame .
  • (19) But after the strange denials that this old, sick man is dying I want to talk not with pity but of his power.
  • (20) Staff here dread the welfare reform bill, waiting for debts, arrears, evictions and pitiful hardship to wash up on their doorstep.

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.