Definition

1. Verb:
   • To feel compassion or pity: To experience a feeling of sorrow and sympathy for someone's unfortunate situation or plight.
   • To feel weary or disheartened by a scene/situation: To feel a sense of sadness, melancholy, or world-weariness upon witnessing or contemplating a sorrowful scene or circumstance.

Usage Examples

• Verb:
  • Nghe câu chuyện của anh ấy, tôi thực sự cám cảnh. (Listening to his story, I truly felt compassion.)
  • Nhìn cảnh người dân mất nhà cửa sau lũ lụt, ai nấy đều cám cảnh. (Seeing the scene of people losing their homes after the flood, everyone felt pity.)
  • Ông cụ ngồi một mình, cám cảnh cho thân phận của mình. (The old man sat alone, feeling disheartened by his own fate.)

Advanced Usage

• "cám cảnh cho...": to feel compassion/pity for (someone/something).
  • Cô ấy cám cảnh cho số phận của những đứa trẻ mồ côi. (She felt pity for the fate of the orphaned children.)
• Often used in literary or formal contexts to describe a deep, reflective emotional response to misfortune.

Variants and Related Words

• Cám thương (verb): To feel pity and sympathy. A close synonym, often used interchangeably with .
  • Câu chuyện đau lòng khiến ai nghe cũng cám thương. (The heartbreaking story made everyone who heard it feel sympathy.)
• Thương cảm (verb): To feel compassion and pity.
  • Chúng tôi vô cùng thương cảm trước hoàn cảnh của gia đình họ. (We deeply sympathize with their family's situation.)

Synonyms

• Thương hại: To pity (can sometimes carry a slight nuance of looking down).
• Xót thương: To feel heartfelt pity/compassion.
• Động lòng thương: To be moved to compassion.

Notes on Meaning

• Primary Meaning: The core meaning is an emotional reaction combining sorrow and compassion () triggered by a scene or situation (). It implies being emotionally moved by witnessing hardship.
• Nuanced Meaning: Beyond simple pity, it can convey a more profound, almost philosophical sense of melancholy or world-weariness in response to the vicissitudes of life, especially in poetic contexts (as in the Tản Đà quote: - Feeling weary of the scene of smoke and clouds obscuring the sea face).

1. To feel compassion, to feel pity
   • nghe nói mà cám cảnh cho anh ta
     on hearing his story, she felt compassion for his plight