different between exaggerate vs bathos

English

Etymology

From Latin exaggeratus, past participle of exaggerare (“to heap up, increase, enlarge, magnify, amplify, exaggerate”), from ex (“out, up”) + aggerare (“to heap up”), from agger (“a pile, heap, mound, dike, mole, pier, etc.”), from aggerere, adgerere (“to bring together”), from ad (“to, toward”) +? gerere (“to carry”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???zæ.d??.?e?t/, /???zæ.d??.?e?t/
• Hyphenation: ex?ag?ger?ate

Verb

exaggerate (third-person singular simple present exaggerates, present participle exaggerating, simple past and past participle exaggerated)

1. To overstate, to describe more than is fact.

Synonyms

• big up
• overexaggerate
• overstate
• hyperbolize

Antonyms

• (overstate): belittle, downplay, understate, trivialize

Derived terms

Related terms

• exaggeration

Translations

Further reading

• exaggerate in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• exaggerate in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• exaggerate at OneLook Dictionary Search

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ek.sa?.?e?ra?.te/, [?ks?ä?????ä?t??]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ek.sad.d??e?ra.te/, [??z?d????????t??]

Verb

exagger?te

1. second-person plural present active imperative of exagger?

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