What does empathy mean?

[GunMan]

What does empathy mean?
And difference between empathy and sympathy?
I always thought they were the opposite of each other, but I just realized that empathy means the care about people? Is this correct??

[Geo777]

Hi, GunMan

These two words have similar meanings.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/empathy
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Slow but sure.

[Jamie (K)]

Sympathy means that you know how some else feels, but you don't feel it. You can have sympathy for someone whose parent has died, but you may not actually feel the same grief.

Empathy means that you know how someone else feels, and you actually feel it. For example, if someone tells me about the difficulty of taking care of someone with cancer, or tells me about problems they are having getting their car fixed at a Volkswagen dealer, I know those emotions so well from my own experience that I actually feel the same emotion that the other person is feeling.