Sympathy
a feeling corresponding to that felt by another; the quality or state of being affected by the affections of another, with feelings corresponding in kind if not in degree; compassion, fellow feeling, commiseration. Sympathy is first evoked in small societies, such as a single family or a small tribe, and gradually extends beyond these limits. One of its moral acquisitions is to go forth toward the lower animals, as shown, for example, by the efforts to prevent their being cruelly and thoughtlessly treated. Also, an agreement of affections or inclinations; a conformity of natural temperament, which makes two persons pleased or in accord with each other; mutual or reciprocal affection or passion; community_of inclination or disposition. In physiology and pathology, reciprocal action of the different parts of the body on each other; an affection of one part of the body in consequence of something taking place in another. Thus, when there is a local injury the whole frame after a time suffers with it. Also the influence exerted over the susceptible organization of one person, as of a hysteric female, by the sight of paroxysms of some nervous disease in another or in others.
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Symphytism
in hilology, a term applied by Earle to a tendency, in that class of words called by him symbolic, to attach themselves to other words, so that the resulting compound is either really one word, or presents the appearance of being one word.
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Syncopation
in grammar, the contraction of a word by the omission of one or more letters or syllables from the middle. In music, suspension or alteration of rhythm by driving the accent to that part of a bar not usually accented. Syncopation may be completed in a bar, or it may be carried by sequence through several bars, or it may be so that more than one bar is involved in the syncopation. Syncopated counterpoint is the fourth species of counterpoint.
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Syncope
the name given to that form of death characterized by failure and cessation of the heart's action as its primary feature. The term is also applied to the state of fainting produced by a diminution or interruption of the action of the heart, and of respiration, accompanied with a suspension of the action of the brain and a temporary loss of sensation, volition, and other faculties. Fatal syncope is usually the result of some nervous "shock," resulting from some severe lesion of organs, or from a want of blood, or an altered and abnormal state of blood pressure. Ordinary syncope is caused chiefly by weakness, mental emotion, etc. The fainting patient should be placed on a couch and the head kept low; while great caution must be observed in stimulating the action of the heart.
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Syncretism
or SYNCRATISM, atcomprehensive tempt to establish a scheme intended to unite or blend harmoniously one with the other principles or parties in irreconcilable antagonism. Specifically, in philosophy, the blending of the tenets of different schools into a universal system. A party among the Platonists, at the revival of letters, to which belonged Ammonius, Picadella Mirandola, Bessarion, and other eminent men, have received the name of Syncretists.
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Syndic
an officer of government invested with varying powers in different places; a kind of magistrate intrusted with the management of the affairs of a city or community; also one chosen to transact business for others. In the University of Cambridge, England, syndics are chosen from the senate to transact special business, as the regulation of fees, the operations of the Clarendon Press, etc. Mayors of Italian towns are so called.
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Syndicates
originally, councils or bodies of syndics; afterward, associations of persons formed with a view of promoting some particular enterprise, discharging some trust, trust, or the like; now, combinations of capitalists for the purpose of controlling production and raising prices; popularly known in the United States as "trusts."
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Synecdoche
in rhetoric, a figure in which the whole is put for a part, or a part for the whole, as the species for the genus, the genus for the species, etc., as, a fleet of 10 sail.
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Synergism
in Church history, a type of Semipelagianism which came into prominence in Germany in the 16th century, and which had for its chief representatives Erasmus and Melanchthon. Luther taught that the Fall rendered man incapable of all good, and powerless powerless to contribute anything to his conversion. Synergism, on the other hand, taught that "God does not deal with man as with a block, but draws him so that his will co-operates"; and this view was adopted in the Leipsic Interim (1548). A controversy arose on the subject, caused by the publication of a book in 1558 on the "Liberty of the Will," by Pfeffinger, a professor at Leipsic, which university together with Wittenberg represented the Synergist view. Flacius, Professor of Theology at Jena, took the strictly Lutheran view which was adopted in the Formula of Concord.
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Synge
JOHN MILLINGTON, an Irish dramatist and poet, born in 1871. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1892, and for 10 years following studied languages and music in Germany, France, and Italy. He finally settled in Paris and devoted himself to the study of French literature. During the period of his stay on the continent, he annually made trips to the Arran Islands, in order to write of the primitive life of its inhabitants . In 1893 he settled in Ireland and devoted himself to writing for the Abbey Theater, in Dublin. He was considered to be the most talented of the dramatists of the Irish Literary Revival. His plays, which were produced in the United States with considerable success, included "The Shadow of the Glen" (1903); " Riders to the Sea" (1904); "The Well of the Saints" (1905); "The Tinker's Wedding" (1909); and "Playboy of the Western World" (1907). He died in 1909.
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Synod of Dort
a synod held at Dort, Dordt, or Dordrecht, in Southern Holland, in 1618 and 1619, to discuss the views of Arminius, which it condemned.
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Synodical Period
in astronomy, the period between two successive conjunctions or oppositions of two heavenly bodies. A synodical month is a lunation , being the period from one full moon to the next full moon or from new moon to next new moon. It is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.37 seconds.
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