Definition of empathy
1
: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner
also
: the capacity for this
2
: the imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it
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Merriam-Webster unabridged
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Time Traveler for empathy
The first known use of empathy was in 1909
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