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bathos

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Ancient Greek βάθος (báthos, depth). Employed ironically following Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, lampooning various errors in contemporary writers.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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bathos (usually uncountable, plural bathoses)

  1. 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...
  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 βάθος 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 clichéd 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, 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

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Antonyms

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  • (antonym(s) of depth): See depth
  • (antonym(s) of artistic failure): pathos
  • (antonym(s) of nadir): See nadir

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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Further reading

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Anagrams

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Dutch

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Etymology

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From Ancient Greek βάθος (báthos, depth).

Noun

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bathos m (uncountable)

  1. bathos
    Coordinate terms: logos, ethos, pathos

Further reading

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