empathy
/ˈɛmpəθi/noun
empathy is spelled E-M-P-A-T-H-Y: 7 letters and 3 syllables. It appears 5.2 times per million words in written English, the 10,843rd most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “empathy vs sympathy” about 90,500 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, empathy means “Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of empathy is empathies.
How many letters and syllables are in empathy?
| Letters | 7: E-M-P-A-T-H-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 5.2 times per million words; the 10,843rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How common is empathy?
Empathy appears 5.2 times per million words in written English, the 10,843rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce empathy?
- /ˈɛmpəθi/
Empathy has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-empathy.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with empathy
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
Forms of empathy
- empathies plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does empathy mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person.
She had a lot of empathy for her neighbor; she knew what it was like to lose a parent too.
- 2
The capacity to understand another person's point of view or the result of such understanding.
- 3
A paranormal ability to psychically read another person's emotions.
- 4
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Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Empathy in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | empathie |
| German | Empathie, Einfühlung , Einfühlungsvermögen |
| Portuguese | empatia |
| Spanish | empatía |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does empathy come from?
A twentieth-century borrowing from Ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια (empátheia, literally “passion”) (formed from ἐν (en, “in, at”) + πάθος (páthos, “feeling”)), equivalent to em- + -pathy, coined by Edward Bradford Titchener in 1909 to translate German Einfühlung. The modern word in Greek εμπάθεια (empátheia) has an opposite meaning denoting strong negative feelings and prejudice against someone.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).