Red Ink Reset: Empathy Is Not a ‘Made-Up’ Word
While the “Y’all Need a Copy Editor” column is a space for media critique, “Red Ink Reset” has been designed for the rest of us. Here, we can analyze common English foibles and observe how our living language is evolving in real time.
Empathy, and the core linguistic differences between empathy and sympathy, quickly surfaced as a topic of national conversation and debate this week. Although these terms are frequently used interchangeably in casual conversation, they mean very different things.
Americans were shocked on Sept. 10, 2025, by the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. A suspect has since been arrested in the aftermath of this highly politically charged incident.
In additional manifestations of violence this week, a student allegedly opened fire at his high school at Evergreen, Colo., and later died. My own child was kept home the day of the Kirk shooting, in part because of household illness but also in part because of an early warning of possible local violence. The country faced its 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and multiple historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) reported retaliatory threats and closures.
It is within this larger public context, then, that the present national conversation about empathy, including the late Charlie Kirk’s position on it, has emerged. Kirk’s quotes, and people’s various interpretations of those quotes, have been repeated and argued enough at this point that we do not need to spend yet more energy on his individual perspective. Nor do we need to debate the many public expressions of emotion that have occurred in the wake of this incident; plenty of others are already holding space for that. It would be irresponsible not to acknowledge the significant public impact of Kirk’s death, however; it has cast a long shadow.
As the national discussion rages, it has become increasingly clear that there is widespread public confusion over the terms empathy, sympathy, pity, mercy, and compassion.
When we talk about the meanings of words, there are two components in play: denotation and connotation.
Denotation is what we’d call the “dictionary definition.” In synonyms, the written definition of various words can appear almost identical.
Connotation refers to implied meanings, or usage contexts within which a word is understood to make sense (or not make sense) by experienced English speakers.
When we discuss how language works in real life, this means we need to pay attention to both the literal meaning and the unwritten, evocative meaning of a word.
This is why English frequently boasts a plethora of words that appear very much the same but are used quite differently.
In the case of each of these words, the dictionary definitions are linked, but the implied weights behind each word are what sets them apart:
Sympathy: I see you’re in pain.
Empathy: I am doing my best to understand the roots of your pain. Witnessing your pain causes me pain, too.
Compassion: Observing your pain makes me want to take concrete action.
Mercy: Whether you deserve my help or not, your pain moves me to act in what I believe to be your best interest.
Pity: I find your pain so tragic or unsettling that I feel uncomfortable. This discomfort might drive me to intervene.
Each of these words has its place in our discussions of history, spirituality, social interaction, and public policy. Although one might stand out to you as a personal favorite (or a pet peeve), none of these terms are “made up” in the sense that they’re specially manufactured or promoted for modern politics. Empathy, however, has had a particularly interesting linguistic journey.
First appearing in English in 1908, the original interpretation of “empathy” would have been understood as closer to “anthropomorphism” or even “animism” than “sympathy.” Examples appear in the art talk of the period, a phenomenon I can relate to slightly as the parent of a student with synesthesia. It’s not a manufactured word so much as a translated word, as its first usage was meant to communicate an older German term to an English audience. Empathy and sympathy continued for some time after this as parallel terms, with empathy emerging as the more popular modern expression of supportive understanding and sympathy falling somewhat out of favor as a relic of Victorian sentimentality.
