1 ~ (to / towards sb) kind to sb who is hurt or sad; showing that you understand and care about their problems:
a sympathetic friend / listener / employer * I did not feel at all sympathetic towards Kate. * I'm here if you need a sympathetic ear (= sb to talk to about your problems). * a sympathetic look / manner / response * She was very sympathetic when I was sick.
2 ~ (to / towards sb/sth) showing that you approve of sb/sth or that you share their views and are willing to support them:
to be sympathetic to aims / causes / ideas * Russian newspapers are largely sympathetic to the president.
3 (of a person) easy to like:
a sympathetic character in a novel * I don't find her a very sympathetic person.
HELPNOTE This meaning is not very common and you should use likeable or pleasant instead.
OPPUNSYMPATHETIC
sympathetically adverb:
to nod / look / smile at sb sympathetically * We hope this application will be treated sympathetically (= it will be approved). * The teacher listened sympathetically to the student's problems.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of sympathetic come from?
This entry for sympathetic is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is sympathetic a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, sympathetic is tagged as adjective.
Does sympathetic appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — sympathetic appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
