Sympathy is when you feel pity at someone, or are sad due to the hardships of a person. Empathy is when you are able to put yourself into what they are going through.

Example: If someone gets a fracture while bike riding, you feel sympathy for them, but if someone gets a fracture and you also fell from your bike and suffered a fracture a while ago, you feel empathy for them.

The word sympathy, in the 16th century, described a relationship between two things that are related in a certain way, like a doctor giving a discount to frequent patients.

It was an open-ended term encompassing love, woe, sorrow and many emotional experiences..

Coined in the 17th century, the word empathy initially began as a German word Einfûhlung, relating to how people derive pleasure from art and nature by finding similarities and injecting their own feelings in it.

Sympathy was a feel with or feeling for emotion, and empathy a feel in emotion.