Bathos is an abrupt transition from the grand or serious to the ordinary or trivial, resulting in an anticlimax, derived from the Greek word for 'depth.'
Bathos refers to an abrupt descent from the lofty or sublime to the mundane or commonplace, creating an anticlimax. The term comes from the Greek word for 'depth.'
| Back | bathos /BAY-thas, -thos/ |
|---|---|
| Front | noun An abrupt descent from lofty or sublime to the commonplace; anticlimax. [From Greek bathos (depth). Earliest documented use: 1638.] “Yet still there is a notion that real space exploration needs real people. And so we are forced to witness, on the one hand, the bathos of astronauts taking pizza deliveries on the International Space Station, a mere 400km from Earth’s surface -- and on the other, the genuine tragedies of men and women dying in our attempts to put them in space.” - Philip Ball; Philae is Boldly Going Where No Man Should Go -- Let’s Leave Space to the Robots; The Guardian (London, UK); Jun 15, 2015. |
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