different between pathos vs bathos

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ????? (páthos, “suffering”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?pe????s/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?pe???o?s/, /?pæ??o?s/

Noun

pathos (countable and uncountable, plural pathoses)

1. The quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, especially that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality.
   • 1874, Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd, 1874:

     His voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled.

   • 20 August 2018, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian, Young women are smashing it at Edinburgh as the #MeToo legacy kicks in

     Pritchard-McLean’s show is perfectly constructed, and at times deeply moving to the point where some audience members were near tears, yet the pathos is undercut by true belly laughs – but don’t trust me, read the reviews.

2. (rhetoric) A writer or speaker's attempt to persuade an audience through appeals involving the use of strong emotions such as pity.
3. (literature) An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.
4. (theology, philosophy) In theology and existentialist ethics following Kierkegaard and Heidegger, a deep and abiding commitment of the heart, as in the notion of "finding your passion" as an important aspect of a fully lived, engaged life.
5. Suffering; the enduring of active stress or affliction.

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:pathos.

Related terms

• antipathy
• apathy
• bathos
• empathy
• pathetic
• patience
• patient
• pathology
• pathogen
• psychopathy
• sympathy

Translations

Further reading

• pathos in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• pathos in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• pathos on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Pashto, Potash, potash, sophta

Portuguese

Alternative forms

• páthos, patos

Noun

pathos m (plural pathos)

1. pathos (the quality of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions)

Spanish

Noun

pathos m (plural pathos)

1. pathos

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