Making contact and appealing to one's sympathy (8)
I believe the answer is:
touching
'making contact' is the definition.
'touching' can be an answer for 'contact' (thesaurus). I'm unsure of the 'making' bit.
'and appealing to one's sympathy' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'and' could be 'n' (common abbreviation for 'and') and 'n' is located in the answer.
'to' is within the answer.
'one' could be 'i' (Roman numeral) and 'i' is present in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for touching that I've seen before include "feeling" , "Contiguous" , "Moving; in contact" , "meeting ..." , "Pathetic" .)