Fellow feeling
What it means
Shared sympathy and understanding for another person's experience.
Reach for it when naming humane identification rather than detached concern
Hard years had given the neighbors genuine fellow feeling.
Words to choose between 7
| everyday | |
|---|---|
| warm |
|
| professional | |
| literary |
-
everyday
Fits when concern for another's difficulty is the main response
Careful Sympathy can remain one-sided and need not arise from common experience.
-
warm
Fits when suffering prompts a wish to help
Careful Compassion can flow across difference without fellow identification.
-
warm
Fits when similarity creates a natural connection
Careful Kinship may be felt without understanding the person's hardship.
-
professional
Fits when understanding another person's perspective is central
Careful Empathy does not always include affection or shared identity.
-
professional
Fits when easy mutual understanding develops in conversation
Careful Rapport may be pleasant but shallow.
-
professional
Fits when shared interests lead to practical support
Careful Solidarity is public and political more often than intimate.
-
literary
communion
Fits when profound shared feeling deserves an elevated term
Careful Communion can carry religious meaning.
Opposites 3
- indifference
- alienation
- callousness
Common phrases 3
-
sense of fellow feeling
The shared task created a sense of fellow feeling among the crews.
-
fellow feeling with
Her years abroad gave her fellow feeling with newly arrived students.
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genuine fellow feeling
Genuine fellow feeling turned polite concern into practical help.
Definitions and examples are written for this site. How words are chosen Updated