a. (sb.) mod.L. sympathēticus, a. Gr. συμπαθητικός, f. συμπαθεῖν, after παθητικός PATHETIC.]
1. Pertaining to, involving, depending on, acting or effected by ‘sympathy,’ or a (real or supposed) affinity, correspondence, or occult influence; esp. in sympathetic powder = ‘powder of sympathy’: see SYMPATHY 1. Now chiefly Hist.
1644. Digby (title), Discourse concerning the Cure of Wounds, by the Sympathetic Powder.
1664. Butler, Hud., II. III. 296. He would … Cure Warts and Corns, with application Of Medcines to th’ Imagination…. And fire a Mine in China, here, With Sympathetick Gunpowder.
a. 1665. Digby, Receipts in Physick, etc. (1668), 45. A Sympathetick cure for the Tooth-ach.—With an Iron-nail raise and cut the Gum from about the Teeth, till it bleed, and that some of the blood stick upon the nail; then drive it into a woodden beam up to the head: After this is done, you never shall have the tooth-ach in all your life.
1665. Glanvill, Scepsis Sci., xxi. 134. To conferr at the distance of the Indies by Sympathetick conveyances, may be as usual to future times, as to us in a litterary correspondence.
1713. Addison, Guard., No. 119. ¶ 5. The Friend … saw his own Sympathetick Needle moving of it self to every Letter which that of his Correspondent pointed at.
1768. Tucker, Lt. Nat., I. II. xix. 32. Those sympathetic cures spoken of by Sir Kenelm Digby, who tells you that wounds have been healed by applying salves and plaisters to the instrument that made them.
1804. Mrs. Barbauld, Life Richardson, I. 12. In those times talismans and wounds cured by sympathetic powder … were seriously credited.
1905. Clodd, Animism, § 13. 66. The numerous practices which come under the head of ‘sympathetic magic,’ or the imitation of a cause to produce a desired effect.
b. Sympathetic ink: a name for various colorless liquid compositions used as ink, the writing with which remains invisible until the color is developed by the application of heat or some chemical reagent. Also fig.
1721. Bailey, Sympathetick Inks, are such as can be made to appear or disappear, by the Application of something that seems to work by Sympathy.
1796. Phil. Trans., LXXXVI. 333. The phænomena which heat produces on the solution of cobalt in muriatic or nitro-muriatic acid, called sympathetic ink.
1822. Imison, Sci. & Art, II. 309. Make a drawing representing a Winter scene in which the trees appear void of leaves, and … put the leaves on with this sympathetic ink.
1848. Richter, Levana, xiii. Like sympathetic ink, it becomes as quickly invisible as visible.
1866. Carlyle, Remin. (1881), I. 158. All written in us already … in sympathetic ink.
1907. Verney Mem., I. 297. He writes topsy-turvy in sympathetic ink, between the lines of a letter ostensibly full of public news.
c. Physiol. and Path. Produced by ‘sympathy’ (see SYMPATHY 1 b): applied to a condition, action, or disorder induced in a person, or in an organ or part of the body, by a similar or corresponding one in another.
1728. Chambers, Cycl., Sympathetic, is particularly applied to all Diseases which have two Causes; the one remote, the other near. In which Sense, the Word is opposed to Idiopathetic.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1824), I. 211. He had only to gape, or yawn, and the professor instantly caught the sympathetic affection.
1804. Abernethy, Surg. Obs., I. 22. Perhaps these vessels undergo a kind of sympathetic enlargement.
1849. Noad, Electricity (ed. 3), 486. The action of Electricity on the muscles and nerves produces two distinct kinds of contractions; the first, which he [sc. Marianini] calls idiopathic, are the result of the immediate action of the current on the muscles; and the second, which he calls sympathetic, arise from the action of Electricity on the nerves which preside over the motions of the muscles.
1872. T. Bryant, Pract. Surg. (1884), I. 385. Sympathetic ophthalmia is … a peculiar form of inflammation … in one eye in consequence of morbid changes … in the other.
d. Anat. Designating one of the two great nerve-systems in vertebrates (the other being the cerebro-spinal), consisting of a double chain of ganglia, with connecting fibers, along the vertebral column, giving off branches and plexuses which supply the viscera and blood-vessels and maintain relations between their various activities; belonging to or forming part of this system. Also applied to a similar set of nerves supplying the viscera in some invertebrates.
1769. Johnstone, in Phil. Trans., LX. 35. The intercostal, or as they are otherwise called, the great sympathetic nerves.
1830. R. Knox, Béclard’s Anat., 337. The particular action of the heart … is directly under the influence of the sympathetic nerve;… digestion, under the combined influence of the par vagum and sympathetic nerve.
1873. Mivart, Elem. Anat., ix. 403. The sympathetic system is made up of … small nerves and ganglia closely connected with the arteries and the viscera.
1880. Bastian, Brain, 46. The ‘sympathetic’ or visceral ganglia of the Frog.
1888. Rolleston & Jackson, Anim. Life, 149. The respiratory sympathetic system [in the Sphinx larva].
transf. 1878. Kingzett, Anim. Chem., 52. Sympathetic saliva is furnished on irritation of the sympathetic nerve.
e. Physics. Used in reference to sounds produced by responsive vibrations induced in one body by transmission of vibrations from another.
1832. Brewster, Nat. Magic, viii. 182. The subdivision of the string, and consequently the production of harmonic sounds, may be effected … by means of a sympathetic action conveyed by the air.
1836. Mrs. Somerville, Connex. Phys. Sci., Introd. (ed. 3), 2. Oscillations, which correspond in their periods with the cause producing them, like sympathetic notes in music.
1898. Stainer & Barrett, Dict. Mus. Terms, s.v. Pianoforte, The player controls all this wealth of sympathetic vibration with the damper pedal.
2. † Agreeing, harmonious, befitting, consonant, accordant (obs.); according with one’s feelings or inclinations, congenial. (Now only as colored by or transf. from 3.)
1673. S. Parker, Reproof Reh. Transp., 471. Thou thyself instead of coarse drugget shalt wear sympathetick silk.
1789. Wordsw., Even. Walk, 316. Now o’er the soothed accordant heart we feel A sympathetic twilight slowly steal.
1875. H. James, Trans. Sketches, 291. My imagination … refused to project into the dark old town and upon the yellow hills that sympathetic glow which forms half the substance of our genial impressions.
1910. Hirth, in Encycl. Brit., VI. 191/2. That natural philosophy of the ‘male and female principles,’ according to which all good things and qualities were held to be male, while their less sympathetic opposites were female.
3. a. Feeling or susceptible of sympathy; sharing or affected by the feelings of another or others; having a fellow-feeling; sympathizing, compassionate. (With various shades of meaning: cf. SYMPATHY 3 a–d.)
a. 1718. Prior, Epil. Lucius, 29. Your Sympathetic Hearts She hopes to move.
1764. Goldsm., Trav., 43. He, whose sympathetic mind Exults in all the good of all mankind.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., I. II. v. Beyond the Atlantic … Democracy … is struggling for life and victory. A sympathetic France rejoices over the Rights of Man.
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, II. 185. Your quick-breathed hearts, So sympathetic to the personal pang.
1867. Dickens, Lett. (1880), II. 281. An unusually tender and sympathetic audience.
1875. J. P. Hopps, Princ. Relig., xvi. (1878), 50. You have faith in a friend … when you know he is unselfish, and truthful, and sympathetic.
b. Pertaining to, of the nature of, characterized by, arising from, or expressive of sympathy or fellow-feeling. (With various shades of meaning as in a.)
a. 1684. Roscommon, Ess. Transl. Verse, 97. United by this sympathetic bond, You grow familiar, intimate, and fond.
1754. Gray, Progr. Poesy, 94. Thine too these golden keys,… This can unlock the gates of Joy;… that … ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.
1782. Miss Burney, Cecilia, V. i. A look of sympathetic concern from Cecilia.
1813. Scott, Rokeby, V. xi. For cold reserve had lost its power In sorrow’s sympathetic hour.
1853. C. Brontë, Villette, xviii. The sympathetic faculty was not prominent in him; to feel, and to seize quickly another’s feelings, are separate properties.
1853. Martineau, Stud. Christ. (1858), 230. Thought, conscience, admiration in the human mind were … the sympathetic response of our common intellect, standing in front of Nature, to the kindred life of the Divine intellect behind Nature.
1901. Daily Chron., 7 Aug., 6/2. The head of the Coal Miners’ Union is opposed to sympathetic strikes.
1906. Lit. World, 15 Nov., 520/1. Professor Dowden’s article on Henrik Ibsen … is sympathetic, but critical as well.
B. sb.
1. Anat. Short for sympathetic nerve or system: see 1 d above.
1808. Barclay, Muscular Motions, 254. These branches, proceeding from the trunks of the eighth pair, par vagum, or middle sympathetic, enter the thorax.
1826. Kirby & Sp., Entomol., IV. xxxvii. 20. The ganglions of the great sympathetics.
1871. Allbutt, in Brit. & For. Med.-Chirurg. Rev., XLVIII. 51. We all know that a galvanized sympathetic causes contractions of blood-vessels.
1872. Huxley, Physiol., vi. 145. The combined blushing and sweating which takes place when the sympathetic in the neck is divided.
2. a. A person affected by ‘sympathy’ (SYMPATHY 1 b); one who is susceptible or sensitive to hypnotic or similar influence. b. A sympathetic person, sympathizer. rare.
1888. C. L Norton, in N. Amer. Rev., June, 705. Favorable conditions may make any one hypnotic to some extent…. Naturally enough a company of sympathetics may be similarly influenced.
1906. Westm. Gaz., 22 Sept., 6/2. The unburdenings to a sympathetic of the griefs which he too has felt and can understand.
Hence Sympatheticism, sympathetic tendency, susceptibility to sympathy (used disparagingly); Sympatheticity, Sympatheticness, the quality of being sympathetic.
1884. Howells, Silas Lapham, II. 289. Penelope … received her visitors with a piteous distraction, which could not fail of touching Bromfield Corey’s Italianised sympatheticism.
1891. Murray’s Mag., March, 316. The deep vein of tenderness, of womanly sympatheticness.
1893. Graphic, 25 March, 318/1. A good cook cannot teach you how to make the pasty … by word of mouth. She may show you something, but the secret lies in your handling, in a sort of sympatheticity.
