sympathizer

plural sympathizers · alternative UK sympathiser

1. derogatoryoftenA person who sympathizes (with a political cause, a side in a conflict, etc.); a supporter.

   His reputation was ruined when it was revealed that he had been a Nazi sympathizer before the war.

   3 more examples

   […] she exposed herself to the fury of the sympathizers with slavery, without fear, and suffered their blows without flinching.

   1869, Sarah Hopkins Bradford, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, Auburn, NY: W.J. Moses, page 102

   ‘[…] And I tell you that the slightest suspicion of my loyalty could be ruin for me, ruin! If it were ever breathed that I were even a sympathiser with this rebellion, there iss an end of me.’

   1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 13”, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC

   The Ardent Spirit pupils now belong to him alone and through them he’ll set his plans in motion, moulding them to be warrior saints, brilliant in deceit against the West and its sympathisers here at home.

   2013, Nadeem Aslam, chapter 4, in The Blind Man’s Garden, London: Faber & Faber

2. archaicA person who has, shows or expresses sympathy (with another person or people); a person who enters into the feelings of another.

   […] I am a sympathizer in every part of thy distress, except (and yet it is cruel to say it) in That which arises from thy guilt.

   1748, [Samuel Richardson], “Letter LX”, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume VII, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a]nd sold by John Osborn, […], →OCLC, page 220

   2 more examples

   […] it is a sad case when the truly godly, who are cordial sympathizers, and earnest intercessours in the straits of a Nation, are stricken dumb in a day of calamity […]

   1655, George Hutcheson, A Brief Exposition on the XII Small Prophets, London: Ralph Smith, Prophecy of Amos, page 157

   Not a mood of his but what found a ready sympathiser in Margaret; not a wish of his that she did not strive to forecast, and to fulfil.

   1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 41, in North and South