sympathy vs understanding

sympathy

noun
  • A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another. 

  • Support in the form of shared feelings or opinions. 

  • Artistic harmony, as of shape or colour in a painting. 

  • The formal expression of pity or sorrow for someone else's misfortune. 

  • The ability to share the feelings of another. 

  • Mutual or parallel susceptibility or a condition brought about by it. 

  • An affinity, association or mutual relationship between people or things such that they are correspondingly affected by any condition. 

  • Feeling of loyalty; tendency towards, agreement with or approval of an opinion or aim; a favorable attitude. 

understanding

noun
  • Sympathy. 

  • Opinion, judgement or outlook. 

  • An informal contract; mutual agreement. 

  • A reconciliation of differences. 

  • The act of one that understands or comprehends; comprehension; knowledge; discernment. 

  • Reason or intelligence, ability to grasp the full meaning of knowledge, ability to infer. 

adj
  • Showing compassion, tolerance, and forbearance. 

How often have the words sympathy and understanding occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )