Empathic vs. Empathetic

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

This is Malcolm Todd.

Hello, Malcolm. Welcome.

Hi, Malcolm. Where are you calling from?

Oh, I’m from Atlanta.

Atlanta? Oh, welcome to the show. We’re glad to have you here.

What can we help you with?

Well, I was listening to the radio the other day, and they had a story on about rats being empathic.

Oh, yeah.

And I thought that they were misspeaking it and calling it empathic instead of empathetic because they were exhibiting empathy.

Right.

And then I saw the written story, and certain enough it was spelled empathic.

And so I’m like a science fiction guy, and Counselor Troy was an empath, and she had empathy and was empathetic.

Her talent was being an empath, but I never knew that there was empathic and empathetic, two words that are the same except for one syllable in the middle.

And then I looked them up and they mean the same thing.

So I thought I’d find out why.

But you made a really good point.

Even though they can be perfect synonyms, because of this whole science fiction culture, where an empath is a person who can sense the emotions of another person to a higher level than an ordinary human, empathetic probably would have been a better choice.

Well, I like empathetic.

That’s what I always grew up with, but I didn’t even know that empathic was a word that meant the same as that.

I thought it was just the science fiction talent.

You know, Malcolm, I remember when that article came out recently, and I thought the same thing.

I thought empathic.

It’s like preventive versus preventative.

It seemed weird to me.

And then, like you, I looked it up, and I found out that empathic is actually an older word, meaning having empathy for people.

But now we hear empathetic all the time.

Empathic, yeah, I think of empaths, the noun.

Counselor Troy is a great example of that.

In English, when we have two very similar words, both in spelling and pronunciation and meaning, then what we do is we tend to come up with variations, and we kind of force them apart so they become more different as time passes.

And I think that’s what we see here with empathic and empathetic.

Okay.

So, Malcolm, we’re sympathetic with your point of view.

I mean, really.

Yeah, yeah, really.

I am definitely sympathetic.

Sympathic, okay.

Malcolm, thanks for calling.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Take care.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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