having the ability of an empath n.
The OED has evidence from 1912 for the general psychological sense ‘demonstrating empathy; able to feel empathy towards a person’.
His new assistant was not a telepath—it could not read thoughts—but it was sensitive to feelings and emotions and would therefore have been aware of Conway’s curiosity. Conway felt like kicking himself for forgetting that empathic faculty.
He heard his voice, toneless, sounding the poverty of empathic emotionality so usual in Party circles.
The Argelian empathic contact, sir?
He was acutely conscious that the task of snatching control away from the ghost was nearly beyond his technical capabilities. The ransad ghost, unlike radio control, was an organic, empathic coupling, not designed to be rejected from the receiving end.
At first, she barely acknowledged her onetime friend and interpreter. Perhaps she read the guilt in Darla’s face, invisible to me, but by now Winnie’s empathic powers were a given. I only wondered as to their extent. Whatever that was, I knew that Winnie’s second sight was keen enough to see Darla’s grief, and perhaps her regret at using Winnie as a pawn, because before long Winnie was hugging Darla too, her capacity for forgiveness and compassion probably greater than anything.
Betazoids walked a fine line between a desire for privacy and acceptance of its impossibility—for amidst an empathic society, privacy was at best a pretense and it was rude to pretend otherwise.
'Cats rated a point-eight-three on the sentience scale, slightly above Beowulf’s gremlins or Old Earth’s dolphins, and they were empaths. Even now, no one had any idea how the empathic links worked, but separating one from its chosen companion caused it intense pain, and it had been established early on that those favored by a 'cat were measurably more stable than those without.
This woman just happens to be a ‘female empathic mesomorph’.
Troi had been focusing her empathic ability on Chiton Kincaid, Stron, and his wife.
He wanted there to be some way it would be caught up by Deanna’s empathic ability and taken from him forever.
You’re a fourth-generation superhero, you grew up on the squad training grounds, you’ve got minor empathic abilities and your personality profile is outgoing and humanistic.
antedating 1959
The OED has cites back to 1909 for the non-SF meaning.
Last modified 2021-10-07 16:41:57
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entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.