bathos

bathos

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈbeɪθɒs/

Noun

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
   • 1727, Alexander Pope, Peri Bathous:

     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.

   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, Wuthering Heights, chapter XXI:

     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 the Guardian:

     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

• (anticlimax): See anticlimax
• (artistic failure through banality): banality, triteness
• (artistic failure through triviality): immaturity, callowness
• (artistic failure through hyperbole): chewing the scenery, hamminess
• (artistic failure through overdone pathos): sappiness, cheesiness, tweeness, treacliness

Antonyms

• (depth): See depth
• (artistic failure): pathos
• (nadir): See nadir

Translations

depth — see depth

unintentional failure at artistic effect

French: bathos (fr) German: Bathos

anticlimax — see anticlimax

overdone pathos

Dutch: valse pathos French: mauvais pathos

ironically bad artistic effect

nadir — see nadir

Further reading

• bathos on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• bathos at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• TAH-BSO