bearing a stress or accent; "an iambic foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable as in `delay'"
suffering severe physical strain or distress; "he dropped out of the race, clearly distressed and having difficulty breathing"; "the victim was in a bad way and needed immediate attention"
expressing or feeling or resulting from sympathy or compassion or friendly fellow feelings; disposed toward; "sympathetic to the students' cause"; "a sympathetic observer"; "a sympathetic gesture"
(of characters in literature or drama) evoking empathic or sympathetic feelings; "the sympathetic characters in the play"
of or relating to the sympathetic nervous system; "sympathetic neurons"; "sympathetic stimulation"