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.

Simplified etymology

Bathos is a Greek word and was first recorded in English with the literal Greek sense “depth.” Alexander Pope introduced its literary sense in the early 18th century and published the Bathos in the third volume of the Miscellanies in 1728. Bathysphere, dating from 1930, comes from the same source.

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.

Topics

External links

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