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bathos / bathetic
Sep. 26th, 2012 07:21 ambathos (BEY-thos, BEY-thohs) - n., the a ludicrous descent from an exalted or lofty style to the commonplace, anticlimax; insincere pathos, sentimentality, mawkishness; triteness or triviality in style.
bathetic (buh-THET-ik) - adj., effusively or insincerely emotional.
So while bathetic is the adjectival form of bathos, it seems to have picked up only one of its attributes, which is a shame as it would be useful to be able to use it to describe a sudden descent in style. Note also the change in initial vowel. To quote Encyclopedia Britannica, "Bathos may result from an inappropriately dignified treatment of the commonplace, the use of elevated language and imagery to describe trivial subject matter, or from such an exaggeration of pathos (emotion provoked by genuine suffering) as to become overly sentimental or ridiculous." Bathos was initially borrowed from Greek bathos, depth, in a purely literal sense in 1638; it was repurposed by Alexander Pope in 1727 in Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry for the ludicrous descent in style sense, with the others following. Bathetic was coined from this in 1834, apparently on the model of pathetic even though this ignores differences in grammar between the two.
---L.
bathetic (buh-THET-ik) - adj., effusively or insincerely emotional.
So while bathetic is the adjectival form of bathos, it seems to have picked up only one of its attributes, which is a shame as it would be useful to be able to use it to describe a sudden descent in style. Note also the change in initial vowel. To quote Encyclopedia Britannica, "Bathos may result from an inappropriately dignified treatment of the commonplace, the use of elevated language and imagery to describe trivial subject matter, or from such an exaggeration of pathos (emotion provoked by genuine suffering) as to become overly sentimental or ridiculous." Bathos was initially borrowed from Greek bathos, depth, in a purely literal sense in 1638; it was repurposed by Alexander Pope in 1727 in Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry for the ludicrous descent in style sense, with the others following. Bathetic was coined from this in 1834, apparently on the model of pathetic even though this ignores differences in grammar between the two.
---L.
