bathos

Meaning

Noun

• Overdone or treacly attempts to inspire pathos.
• Depth.
• Risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to
• The ironic use of such failure for satiric or humorous effect.
• A nadir, a low point particularly in one's career.

Related

Similar words

• See anticlimax
• banality, triteness
• immaturity, callowness
• chewing the scenery, hamminess
• sappiness, cheesiness, tweeness, treacliness

Opposite words

• See depth
• pathos
• See nadir

Origin

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