bathos means overdone or treacly attempts to inspire pathos.
bathos is pronounced /ˈbeɪθɒs/.
Why “bathos” is a great word
An unintentional lapse from the sublime or serious to the absurdly trivial or ridiculous, resulting in anticlimax or mawkishness. From the Ancient Greek βάθος (báthos, 'depth'), the modern literary sense was established following Alexander Pope's satirical treatise 'Peri Bathous' (1727). Unlike 'pathos,' which evokes genuine pity or sorrow, or a simple 'anticlimax,' which is merely disappointing, bathos is a specific stylistic failure: the jarring descent into the absurd. It is the funeral oration that veers into complaints about the parking situation, the elegy that mourns a lost cat with the gravity of a fallen empire, or the love letter that compares a beloved's eyes to two convenient bus stops—sentiment overreaching until it trips over its own shoelaces, the sound of gravity collapsing under its own weight.
Etymology
Borrowed from Ancient Greek βάθος (báthos, “depth”). Employed ironically following Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, lampooning various errors in contemporary writers.
noun
- Overdone or treacly attempts to inspire pathos.e.g.“I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment...”
- A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing toe.g.“While a plain and direct Road is pav'd to their ὐψος, or sublime; no Track has been yet chalk'd out to arrive at our βάθος, or profund.”
- A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:; An anticlimax: an abrupt transition in style or subject from high to low.
- A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:; A banality: an unaffectingly clichéd or trite treatment of a topic.
- A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:; Immaturity: a lack of serious treatment of a topic.
- A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:; A hyperbole: excessiveness.
- The ironic use of such failure for satiric or humorous effect.
- A nadir, a low point particularly in one's career.e.g.“How meanly has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present!”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- pathos 85% match — 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. vs bathos →
- hyperbole 81% match — Deliberate or unintentional overstatement, particularly extreme overstatement. vs bathos →
- antiphrasis 81% match — Use of a word or phrase in a sense opposite of its literal meaning, especially for ironic or humorous effect. vs bathos →
- adoxograph 81% match — A work of adoxography. vs bathos →
- hamartia 81% match — The tragic flaw of the protagonist in a literary tragedy. vs bathos →
- tragic 81% match — Causing great sadness or suffering. vs bathos →
- pseudoprofundity 80% match — illusory profundity; pretensions of depth vs bathos →
- irony 80% match — The quality of a statement that, when taken in context, may actually mean something different from, or the opposite of, what is written literally; the use of words expressing something other than their literal intention, often in a humorous context. vs bathos →