bathos

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an abrupt descent from an elevated or serious style to something trivial, ordinary, or ridiculous

   The tragedy ends in bathos when the grand prophecy is interrupted by a complaint about dinner.

2. 2
   noun

   excessive, insincere, or cloying sentiment intended to arouse emotion

   The speech's bathos turned genuine grief into theatrical self-pity.

Borrowed from Greek bathos, 'depth.' The modern ironic sense was popularized by Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, which parodied the deliberate art of sinking from the sublime into the ridiculous. From that literary fall, bathos also came to mean failed or overdone emotional appeal.

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