bathos
nounUK /ˈbeɪθɒs/
Etymology Borrowed from Ancient Greek βάθος (báthos, “depth”). Employed ironically following Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, lampooning various errors in contemporary writers.
8 senses
- 1Overdone or treacly attempts to inspire pathos.
- 2A risible failure on the part of a work of art to…
- 3An anticlimax: an abrupt transition in style or subject…
- 4A banality: an unaffectingly clichéd or trite treatment…
- 5Immaturity: a lack of serious treatment of a topic.
- 6A hyperbole: excessiveness.
- 7The ironic use of such failure for satiric or humorous effect.
- 8A nadir, a low point particularly in one's career.
Usually Overdone or treacly attempts to inspire pathos.
- I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment...1847, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, page 192:
Art, Arts, Literature, Media, Publishing Usually A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to
- 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.1727, Alexander Pope, Peri Bathous:
› A risible failure on the part of a work of…
Art, Arts, Literature, Media, Publishing Usually An anticlimax: an abrupt transition in style or subject from high to low.
Art, Arts, Literature, Media, Publishing Usually A banality: an unaffectingly clichéd or trite treatment of a topic.
Art, Arts, Literature, Media, Publishing Usually Immaturity: a lack of serious treatment of a topic.
Art, Arts, Literature, Media, Publishing Usually A hyperbole: excessiveness.
Art, Arts, Literature, Media, Publishing Usually The ironic use of such failure for satiric or humorous effect.
Uncommon, Usually A nadir, a low point particularly in one's career.
- How meanly has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present!1814, Thomas Jefferson, Writings, IV.240:
- 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.1847, Emily Brontë, chapter XXI, in Wuthering Heights:
1 more example
- 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.2018, Matthew d'Ancona, “The Tories are a party in crisis, their identity in desperate shape”, in Guardian:
- Synonyms
- anticlimax, narm, banality, triteness, immaturity, callowness, chewing the scenery, hamminess, sappiness, cheesiness, tweeness, treacliness
- Derived terms
- bathetic
- Related terms
- comic relief