Empathy
Etymology
A surprisingly modern coinage: psychologist Edward Titchener minted “empathy” around 1909 to translate the German aesthetic term "Einfühlung," “feeling into.” He built it from Greek "en-" (in) + "pathos" (feeling), on the model of the much older "sympathy." So the word for our most intimate emotional skill is barely a century old.
noun · /EM-puh-thee/
The capacity to sense and share another person’s feelings by imaginatively entering their experience.
What it names
Reach for it for feeling with someone — actually taking on a version of what they feel — rather than merely feeling sorry for them.
Example
Her empathy was such that she teared up the moment she saw the tears start in someone else’s eyes.
Related idea
Against sympathy: sympathy is feeling for someone from the outside (concern, pity); empathy is feeling with them from the inside (resonance). Refined further, compassion adds the impulse to act — empathy that stays only resonance can even burn out into “empathy fatigue.”