different between bathos vs mockery

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ????? (báthos, “depth”). Employed ironically following Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, lampooning various errors in contemporary writers.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?be???s/

Noun

bathos (uncountable)

1. Overdone or treacly attempts to inspire pathos.
2. (now uncommon) Depth.
   • 1638, Robert Sanderson, "A sermon preached at Newport in the Isle of Wight", II.101:

     There is such a height, and depth, and length, and breadth in that love; such a ????? in every dimension of it.

3. (literature, the arts) Risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to
   1. anticlimax: an abrupt transition in style or subject from high to low.
   2. banality: unaffectingly cliché or trite treatment of a topic.
   3. immaturity: lack of serious treatment of a topic.
   4. hyperbole: excessiveness
4. (literature, the arts) The ironic use of such failure for satiric or humorous effect.
5. (uncommon) A nadir, a low point particularly in one's career.
   • 1814, Thomas Jefferson, Writings, IV.240:

     How meanly has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present!

   • 1847, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, chapter XXI:

     I know what he suffers now, for instance, exactly: it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer, though. And he’ll never be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness and ignorance.

   • 2018, Matthew d'Ancona, The Tories are a party in crisis, their identity in desperate shape in the Guardian:[1]

     Thus can the ideology of the fringe, the pinstripe mutterings of the nativist few, end up determining the trajectory of an entire nation. This is where bathos meets tragedy.

Synonyms

• (anticlimax): See anticlimax
• (artistic failure through banality): banality, triteness
• (artistic failure through triviality): immaturity, callowness
• (artistic failure through hyperbole): chewing the scenery, hamminess
• (artistic failure through overdone pathos): sappiness, cheesiness, tweeness, treacliness

Antonyms

• (depth): See depth
• (artistic failure): pathos
• (nadir): See nadir

Translations

Further reading

• bathos on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• bathos at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• TAH-BSO

English

Etymology

From Middle English mokkery, from Anglo-Norman mokerie, mokery and Middle French mocquerie, moquerie, from moquer, moker (“to mock”) + -erie (“-ery”), perhaps from Byzantine Greek ????? (m?kós, “mocker”), perhaps from Arabic ?????????? (al-makru, “guile, cunning”). Equivalent to mock +? -ery.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?m?k??i/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?m?k??i/

Noun

mockery (countable and uncountable, plural mockeries)

1. The action of mocking; ridicule, derision.
2. Something so lacking in necessary qualities as to inspire ridicule; a laughing-stock.
3. (obsolete) Something insultingly imitative; an offensively futile action, gesture etc.
4. Mimicry, imitation, now usually in a derogatory sense; a travesty, a ridiculous simulacrum.

   The defendant wasn't allowed to speak at his own trial - it was a mockery of justice.

Usage notes

• We often use make a mockery of someone or something, meaning to mock them. See also Appendix:Collocations of do, have, make, and take

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:ridicule

Translations