The word sympathetic means different things in different contexts.
- In neurology and neuroscience, the sympathetic nervous system is a part of the autonomic nervous system
- In music theory, sympathetic strings are strings on a musical instrument that resonate without contact
- In psychology, sympathy is a feeling of compassion or identification with another
- In religion, magic, and anthropology, sympathy is the belief that like affects like, that something can be influenced through its relationship with another thing
- Sympathetic detonation, a detonation, usually unintended, of an explosive charge by a nearby explosion
- Sympathetic resonance, a harmonic phenomenon wherein a body responds to external vibrations
Famous quotes containing the word sympathetic:
“[Rutherford B. Hayes] was a patriotic citizen, a lover of the flag and of our free institutions, an industrious and conscientious civil officer, a soldier of dauntless courage, a loyal comrade and friend, a sympathetic and helpful neighbor, and the honored head of a happy Christian home. He has steadily grown in the public esteem, and the impartial historian will not fail to recognize the conscientiousness, the manliness, and the courage that so strongly characterized his whole public career.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he give so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him. They wish to be saved from the mischief of their vices, but not from their vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A sympathetic look always makes me feel sorry for myself.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)