ἀντιπάθεια

Antipátheia in Greek means opposition of feeling, from anti (against, opposite) and pathos (feeling, suffering). Like sympathy, it was a Stoic concept — natural antipathy explained why certain substances repelled each other, why cats and dogs fought, why some people could not tolerate each other. The word was quasi-scientific: a theory of natural repulsion paired with the theory of natural attraction (sympathy).

The word entered English through Latin antipathia in the sixteenth century. Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) devoted pages to natural antipathies: a sheep flees a wolf even if it has never seen one; a lodestone repels iron of certain orientations. These natural antipathies were considered facts about the world, not just human emotions. The word described a property of matter as much as a state of mind.

By the eighteenth century, antipathy had narrowed to its current meaning: a strong, instinctive dislike or aversion. The scientific pretensions fell away. You have an antipathy toward something or someone — the feeling is immediate, pre-rational, and difficult to justify with arguments. Antipathy is the emotion you feel before you think about why.

The word survives in formal English but is less common in casual speech. 'I have an antipathy toward seafood' sounds stiff. 'I can't stand seafood' says the same thing. But antipathy carries a nuance the informal phrase does not — it implies the dislike is deep, constitutional, possibly inexplicable. An antipathy is not a preference. It is a recoil.