Empathetic vs. Emphatic

Empathetic is similar to sympathetic and is used to describe someone who is so sensitive to someone else’s feelings that she is able to feel and understand them herself, without the need for direct communication:

empathetic social worker who somehow knew exactly how each person felt

Emphatic is the adjective form of the noun emphasis, and it means “strong; forceful; characterized by emphasis”:

made an emphatic gesture as he ranted