Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Characterized by bathos.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Relating to or characterized by bathos; sinking rhetorically, or in style.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective rare Having the character of bathos.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Characterized by or pertaining to
bathos .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective effusively or insincerely emotional
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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The synonymy of such lovesick sappiness: mawkish is unpleasantly insipid; maudlin is teary (an alteration of the weeping penitent Mary Magdalene); gushy is prone to pour out torrents of flattery; schmaltzy is cornball; gooey implies a substance or emotion both sticky and slithery; squishy-soft is moistly weak; bathetic, from the Greek bathos (“depth”), coined on the analogy of pathos to pathetic, connotes both triteness and insincerity.
The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time William Safire 2004
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The synonymy of such lovesick sappiness: mawkish is unpleasantly insipid; maudlin is teary (an alteration of the weeping penitent Mary Magdalene); gushy is prone to pour out torrents of flattery; schmaltzy is cornball; gooey implies a substance or emotion both sticky and slithery; squishy-soft is moistly weak; bathetic, from the Greek bathos (“depth”), coined on the analogy of pathos to pathetic, connotes both triteness and insincerity.
The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time William Safire 2004
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I used 'bathetic' in an e-mail to council colleagues - one of them told me my spellchecker was faulty.
A tad irritating 2008
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It's not quite as able and seemingly effortless as some of Lovecraft's later work would usually be although anyone who finds this story "dry and long-winded" with a "bathetic" ending, as Joshi claims to, shouldn't be as fond of "Shadow Out of Time" as Joshi claims he is, but it's much, much better than the critical consensus seems to have it.
Kenneth Hite's Journal princeofcairo 2007
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Dickens's readers really wanted to feel the kind of bathetic sadness that he tried to evoke.
SharperIron 2009
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"Sing It Loud" is an inspirational tune about being true to yourself, the sort of bathetic theme that can sink an artist into cliches and obvious moves like a rousing chorus.
Michael Giltz: CD Of The Week: kd lang Is Back! (Did She Ever Leave?) Michael Giltz 2011
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"Sing It Loud" is an inspirational tune about being true to yourself, the sort of bathetic theme that can sink an artist into cliches and obvious moves like a rousing chorus.
Michael Giltz: CD Of The Week: kd lang Is Back! (Did She Ever Leave?) Michael Giltz 2011
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She wasn't an ingenue a year later when she posed naked under a bedsheet, opposite the Palace of Westminster, in an extraordinary image: the glamour of Parliament made bathetic by the way Bercow's leg poked provocatively out between a beige armchair and the curtains.
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This bathetic tale of soul-searching brought to mind the excitable British darts commentator Sid Waddell, who once said of the precocious world champion, Eric Bristow: When Alexander the Great was 33 he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer.
Boardroom Conquerors Philip Delves Broughton 2012
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As crises go, the Clinton-Lewinsky imbroglio is now an absurdist, bathetic footnote to what was in fact significant about that era: the evolution of finance in a culture of deregulation and the evolution of jihadism against the United States.
Time For A Slow-Word Movement Trevor Butterworth 2009
johnmperry commented on the word bathetic
adj. of bathos
June 22, 2008
renumeratedfrog commented on the word bathetic
I don't think it's a coincidence that bathetic people are usually also quite pathetic .
August 20, 2008
smeggo commented on the word bathetic
From the stars to the gutter.
October 10, 2008