bathos
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Borrowed from Ancient Greek βάθος (báthos, “depth”). Employed ironically following Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, lampooning various errors in contemporary writers.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]bathos (usually uncountable, plural bathoses)
- Overdone or treacly attempts to inspire pathos.
- 1847, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, page 192:
- I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment...
- (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 βάθος in every dimension of it.
- (literature, the arts) Risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:
- anticlimax: an abrupt transition in style or subject from high to low.
- banality: unaffectingly clichéd or trite treatment of a topic.
- immaturity: lack of serious treatment of a topic.
- hyperbole: excessiveness
- 1727, Alexander Pope, Peri Bathous:
- (literature, the arts) The ironic use of such failure for satiric or humorous effect.
- (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, chapter XXI, in Wuthering Heights[1]:
- 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 Guardian[2]:
- 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
[edit]- (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
[edit]- (antonym(s) of “depth”): See depth
- (antonym(s) of “artistic failure”): pathos
- (antonym(s) of “nadir”): See nadir
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]depth — see depth
anticlimax — see anticlimax
overdone pathos
|
ironically bad artistic effect
nadir — see nadir
See also
[edit]Further reading
[edit]Anagrams
[edit]Dutch
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From Ancient Greek βάθος (báthos, “depth”).
Noun
[edit]bathos m (uncountable)
Further reading
[edit]bathos on the Dutch Wikipedia.Wikipedia nl
Categories:
- English terms borrowed from Ancient Greek
- English terms derived from Ancient Greek
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/eɪθɒs
- Rhymes:English/eɪθɒs/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with uncommon senses
- en:Literature
- Dutch terms borrowed from Ancient Greek
- Dutch terms derived from Ancient Greek
- Dutch lemmas
- Dutch nouns
- Dutch uncountable nouns
- Dutch masculine nouns
- nl:Rhetoric