late 12c., "act of touching, sense of touch," verbal noun from feel (v.). Meaning "a conscious emotion" is mid-14c. Meaning "what one feels (about something), opinion" is from mid-15c. Meaning "capacity to feel" is from 1580s.

c. 1400, "pertaining to the physical senses, sensory," present-participle adjective from feel (v.). Related: Feelingly.

1610s, an attempt to translate the sense of Latin compassio and Greek sympatheia. See fellow (n.) + feeling (n.). It yielded a back-formed verb, fellow-feel in 17c., mercifully short-lived.

"tender or sensitive side of one's nature," 1771, from plural of feeling.

"egotistic sentiment or feeling, exclusive self-consideration," 1640s; see auto- "self" + -pathy "feeling." Related: Autopath; autopathic.

1721, "loss of feeling," medical Latin, from Greek anaisthēsia "want of feeling or perception, lack of sensation (to pleasure or pain)," abstract noun from an- "without" (see an- (1)) + aisthēsis "feeling" (from PIE root *au- "to perceive"). For the abstract noun ending, see -ia.

As "a procedure for the prevention of pain in surgical operations," attested from 1846. Aesthesia "capacity for feeling" is attested in English from 1853, perhaps a back-formation.

1570s, "affinity between certain things," from French sympathie (16c.) and directly from Late Latin sympathia "community of feeling, sympathy," from Greek sympatheia "fellow-feeling, community of feeling," from sympathes "having a fellow feeling, affected by like feelings," from assimilated form of syn- "together" (see syn-) + pathos "feeling" (from PIE root *kwent(h)- "to suffer").

In English, almost a magical notion at first; used in reference to medicines that heal wounds when applied to a cloth stained with blood from the wound. Meaning "conformity of feelings" is from 1590s; sense of "fellow feeling, compassion" is first attested c. 1600. An Old English loan-translation of sympathy was efensargung.

1630s, "capable of feeling, having the power of or characterized by the exercise of sense-perception," from Latin sentientem (nominative sentiens) "feeling," present participle of sentire "to feel" (see sense (n.)). Related: Sentiently.

word-forming element meaning "feeling, suffering, emotion; disorder, disease," from Latin -pathia, from Greek -patheia "act of suffering, feeling" (from PIE root *kwent(h)- "to suffer"). Meaning "system of treatment of disease, method, cure, curative treatment" is abstracted from homeopathy (q.v.).

"feeling of confidence and security as to oneself," 1590s, from self- + assurance.