The difference between related and relatable

Question

This post gives the difference between related and relatable by comparing the definitions.

related is standing in relation or connection while relatable is possible to relate; able to be related to.

This post gives an nice example of related and relevant

math.stackexchange is related to ell.stackexchange

as they're both StackExchange sites, however,

the one is probably not relevant to the other in terms of content

as the topics covered by each site probably don't overlap much.

Could someone give similar examples to compare the difference between related and relatable?

Answer 1

These two words are not actually as similar as they first seem. "related" is a general-purpose term that can be used to connect just about anything to something else, to say they have some common association or similarity. "relatable", on the other hand, is (at least nowadays) almost always in the sense of some person being able to understand or emotionally connect with someone else, or a situation somebody is experiencing.

So, for example:

His sadness is related to the loss of his wife.

(the sadness is connected or associated with the loss)

whereas:

His sadness is relatable, because many people have experienced similar things.

(the sadness is something that other people can understand or empathize with)

It's also worth noting that something is pretty much always "related to" something else (e.g. "sadness" and "loss"), but "relatable" in this sense only refers to one thing ("sadness").

I hope this helps..