Does sympathy necessarily mean pity?

This one has bugged me for a while. I've always been under the impression that sympathy doesn't have to mean pity. But everyone else tells me I'm dead wrong. So does sympathy always mean pity?

Sympathy and pity have a synonymous convergence, but also diverge in some respects.

In addition to its meaning of pity, sympathy can refer to a special kind of understanding that two or more people share.

I had a special sympathy for Martha's desire to excel in math, since I too loved math and wanted to see someone from our family do well.

See? No pity involved. The word actually comes from the Greek for "with feeling". It means to resonate emotionally with someone else. It can also be an acoustic term. Push down the sostenuto pedal on a piano and make a loud shout, preferably singing. You will hear the piano strings resonate faintly. This is called "sympathetic vibration." That is a direct physical analogue to the emotional resonance I'm talking about.

You are correct. In fact sympathy doesn't mean pity at all. It means a shared pain or close emotional feeling. I feel bad because you feel bad. You can pity someone who doesn't feel bad at all and for varied reasons. For instance, I might pity the fool. Sympathy requires a similar feeling in the person I'm sympathizing with.