When you feel sympathetic toward someone, you understand their difficulties and feel kindly toward them because of what they're going through. If your friend fails a test they studied hard for, you feel sympathetic: you recognize how disappointed they must feel and want to comfort them.

Being sympathetic means you can imagine yourself in someone else's situation and respond with compassion. When a character in a story loses something precious, sympathetic readers feel sad along with them. When a classmate gets in trouble for an honest mistake, sympathetic students don't pile on with criticism.

The word also describes people who naturally evoke this kind of understanding. A sympathetic character in a book is someone readers care about and root for. A sympathetic teacher is one who understands when students are struggling and responds with patience rather than frustration.

You can be sympathetic without agreeing with someone's choices. You might feel sympathetic toward a teammate who strikes out in a big game while still wishing they'd practiced more. The word captures that particular combination of understanding someone's feelings and wishing things had gone better for them.

The related word sympathy is the noun form: you feel sympathy for someone, or you express your sympathies when something sad happens to them.