These two nouns are rarely used outside of educated discussions about literature and drama. However, pathos is commonly understood, whereas bathos is talked about less often. Let's start with bathos.
Bathos, which means "depth" in Greek, sort-of means the opposite in English today. Originally, it meant the technique, or mistake, in literature, when a lofty atmosphere or topic, such as in The Bible, suddenly turns to the mundane (the everyday, the commonplace), creating an unexpected and often humorous contrast. For example, if you were talking about old churches, and then discuss what kind of toilet paper they have in their bathrooms. You have probably seen this technique in humor, especially satire.
However, bathos has now gained another meaning in English, probably from people mixing together the meaning of pathos with the correct meaning of bathos. This new meaning of bathos is basically, bad pathos—artistically bad, not evil—i.e. over-sentimentality—or what we call "pulling on your heart strings" in English. In in other words, pathos that feels fake.
However, this second meaning of bathos is still technically incorrect, from the point of view of educated literary criticism. So, let us show a correct use, where bathos refers to the sudden transition from the lofty to the mundane:
I think you will find few novels in English with greater bathos than John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, in which the main character discusses a lot of medieval philosophy and often eats far too many cheap hot dogs.
Confederacy of Dunces is full of bathos and very funny.
Pathos, in contrast, means something like "suffering" or "emotion," since we see the path- root in such words as empathy, sympathy, pathetic, and psychopathology—the study of mental illness.
Pathos refers to the property of some dramatic or literary works, where the audience feels sympathy for the suffering of the characters:
The last part of The Lord of The Rings, when the character Frodo always looks like he is about to die, has too much pathos for my taste.
Not surprisingly, the appeal to pathos is one of the most common persuasive techniques that people use and are exposed to—for better and for worse.
More Examples of How to Use "Bathos" in a Sentence
- He had never been more aware of the bathos of his life than he was at that moment, the pinnacle of his embarrassment and shame.
- It was nothing short of bathos to see a man who was once a respected, world-renowned journalist reduced to selling flowers on the street.
- The bathos of the situation was not lost on the audience, whose laughs quickly turned to scofffs.
- John's cogent argument was ruined and descended into bathos with the help of just a single sentence coming near the end of his speech, a sentence that so happened to contain the most irreverant and poorly timed joke in the history of oratory.
- Ultimately, bathos is a versatile tool that can be used to achieve a variety of effects in storytelling.
More Examples of How to Use "Pathos" in a Sentence
- Pathos is a powerful tool for writers that can be used to evoke an emotional response in the reader or create a connection with them.
- The audience was moved by the pathos in the speech, especially during the story about the soldier who lost his life in battle.
- The advertisement's use of pathos was very effective in getting me to feel angry about the issue it was presenting.
- The pathos of the scene was too much to bear.
- Lisa's story struck a chord of undefinable pathos within me and I teared up.
- Most confusing was the pathos of war, an internal collision of ferver and fear.
- For the their first assignment, students had to analyze appeals to pathos used by phone companies to persuaude audiences to upgrade their phones.