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# sympathetic

«sympathetic» in Mova's school dictionary: **showing that you understand and care about someone's…** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

### part of speech

adjective (sympathetic, more sympathetic, most sympathetic)

### meaning for a pupil

1) Sympathetic means showing that you understand and care about someone's sadness or problems: a sympathetic friend. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#m1)

2) Sympathetic to an idea or group means agreeing with it or supporting it. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#m2)

3) A sympathetic character in a story is one readers like and care about. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#m3)

### sense in the lessons

Feelings and PSHE: being sympathetic means listening, saying kind words, and helping when a friend is upset. English lessons: authors make a character sympathetic by showing their struggles and kindness. Science (older pupils): the sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for «fight or flight».

### examples

- The nurse was very sympathetic when I hurt my arm. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#x1)
- My friends were sympathetic when my cat died. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#x2)
- The head teacher is sympathetic to our idea for a garden. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#x3)
- The hero is a sympathetic character because he is brave and kind. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#x4)
- She gave me a sympathetic smile. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#x5)
- Not everyone was sympathetic to his complaints. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#x6)
- But, when the two heroes met face to face, both were seized with an impulse of sympathetic admiration for each other. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/#x7)

### note

False friend: in many European languages (French sympathique, Spanish simpático, Ukrainian «симпатичний») the word means «nice, likeable» or «good-looking», but English «sympathetic» means «understanding and caring about someone's troubles». Noun: sympathy. Compare: empathy (feeling what another person feels).

### In the corpora

- [The sitar has sympathetic strings that nobody plucks; they vibrate by themselves when matching notes are played.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/arts/41-olympiad-music-puzzles/14/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «sympathetic» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sympathetic/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.