Tender, compassionate, sympathetic, warm, warmhearted, responsive are comparable when they mean expressing or expressive of feeling that reveals affectionate interest in another especially in his joys, sorrows, or welfare.
Tender implies a sensitiveness to influences that awaken gentle emotions (as love, affection, pity, or kindliness) and often a capacity for expressing such emotions with a delicacy and gentleness that are especially grateful to the person concerned.
Compassionate implies a temperament or a disposition that is either easily moved by the sufferings or hardships of another or is quick to show pity with tenderness or mercy.
Sympathetic is a more comprehensive term than compassionate ; it implies a temperament or a disposition that enables one to enter into the life of another and share his sorrows, his joys, his interests, his antipathies, and his ways of thinking and feeling and to give that other the impression that he is not alone or that he is being fairly and justly understood.
Sympathetic is also applicable to attitudes or treatments that reveal a capacity for appraising or treating men and their experiences with great fairness and understanding.
Warm implies a capacity for feeling and expressing love, affection, or interest with depth, ardor, or fervency; it suggests less softness of feeling or compassion than tender , but more heartiness, cordiality, or force.
Warmhearted differs little from warm in meaning, but it usually carries a stronger implication of generosity, unselfishness, and, often, compassionateness.
Responsive differs from the preceding terms in usually suggesting sensitiveness to another’s display of tenderness, compassion, sympathy, or warmth and a capacity for responding to that emotion; it stresses impressionableness and suggests a reaction, rather than a taking of the initiative.