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(n.)
The compassion you feel when bonding with a digital being or device, alongside the empathy felt when witnessing it be “mistreated.”
When the human tour guide shoved the service robot aside, half the visitors flinched with synthopathy.
Does it ring true?
From the future, or already here?
Synth (short for synthetic) + -opathy; rooted in Greek pathos, feeling or suffering, which gave us empathy and telepathy. Psychologists initially dubbed this the Tamagotchi Effect, after the 1990s keychain pets whose deaths caused genuine grief. Synthopathy is that attachment grown up, where the empathy is real even when its object is not. Pronounced SIN-tho-PATH-ee.
Future Words: A Non-Obvious Glossary of Terms That Don’t Exist (But Soon Will) collects all 100, each with its example sentence and coinage notes, from the bestselling authors of The Future Normal. Hardcover, October 20, 2026.