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 →

2) Sympathetic to an idea or group means agreeing with it or supporting it. tree →

3) A sympathetic character in a story is one readers like and care about. tree →

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 →
• My friends were sympathetic when my cat died. tree →
• The head teacher is sympathetic to our idea for a garden. tree →
• The hero is a sympathetic character because he is brave and kind. tree →
• She gave me a sympathetic smile. tree →
• Not everyone was sympathetic to his complaints. tree →
• But, when the two heroes met face to face, both were seized with an impulse of sympathetic admiration for each other. tree →

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.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «sympathetic» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.