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Definition of Pathos
1. Noun. A quality that arouses emotions (especially pity or sorrow). "The film captured all the pathos of their situation"
2. Noun. A feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others. "The blind are too often objects of pity"
Generic synonyms: Fellow Feeling, Sympathy
Derivative terms: Commiserate, Pathetic, Piteous, Pity
3. Noun. A style that has the power to evoke feelings.
Definition of Pathos
1. n. That quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, esp., that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality; as, the pathos of a picture, of a poem, or of a cry.
2. n. The quality or character of those emotions, traits, or experiences which are personal, and therefore restricted and evanescent; transitory and idiosyncratic dispositions or feelings as distinguished from those which are universal and deep-seated in character; -- opposed to ethos.
Definition of Pathos
1. Noun. That quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, esp., that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality. ¹
2. Noun. (rhetoric) A writer's attempt to persuade an audience through appeals involving the use of strong emotions not strictly limited to pity. ¹
3. Noun. (literature) An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character. ¹
4. Noun. (theology philosophy) In theology and existentialist ethics following Kierkegaard and Heidegger, a deep and abiding commitment of the heart, as in the notion of "finding your passion" as an important aspect of a fully lived, engaged life. ¹
¹ Source: wiktionary.com
Definition of Pathos
1. a quality that arouses feelings of pity or compassion [n -ES]
Lexicographical Neighbors of Pathos
Literary usage of Pathos
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern by Charles Dudley Warner, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Lucia Isabella Gilbert Runkle, George H Warner (1902)
"pathos From 'Principle in Art' PITY differs from pathos in this: the latter ...
In an ideally perfect nature, indeed, pity, and pathos which is the feeling ..."
2. Hegel's Esthetics: A Critical Exposition by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1885)
"pathos, on the contrary, excludes all notion of the interested or the blameworthy.
The sacred love of Antigone for her brother is an example of pathos, ..."
3. The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos by Richard Claverhouse Jebb (1876)
"pathos and Nothing in the criticism of Dionysios ... There has never, perhaps,
been a greater master of stern and solemn pathos than Thucydides. ..."
4. The Problem of the Homeric Poems by William Duguid Geddes (1878)
"As examples of tender pathos, we have only to name the parting of Hector and ...
Book fi would thus resemble Z in pathos, and I in oratorical power. ..."
5. The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeos by Richard Claverhouse Jebb (1893)
"1 After inquiring how far Lysias fails in pathos, it remains to speak of the ...
Dionysius says (in effect) that, besides pathos, Lysias wants two other ..."
6. Publishers Weekly by Publishers' Board of Trade (U.S.), Book Trade Association of Philadelphia, American Book Trade Union, Am. Book Trade Association, R.R. Bowker Company (1905)
"Rich in pathos. A loring young Quaker Girl, a dashing Southerner and ... the itory
is a very good one. It takes place in the beautiful Schuylkill Valley, ..."
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