What does pathos mean?
Pathos is the capacity of speech, writing, music, behavior, or an experience to evoke strong and often tender emotion, particularly pity, sympathy, or compassion. Its emotional effect commonly arises from suffering, injustice, vulnerability, or a person's dignified struggle. In literary criticism, pathos refers to an author's ability to move an audience through such material. The word can also carry a mildly critical implication: a scene described as excessive, sentimental, or melodramatic may be said to rely too heavily on pathos. Pathos is therefore broader than pity alone and narrower than emotion in general, since it particularly concerns the arousal of feeling through suffering or vulnerability. It remains a familiar word in literary and cultural criticism and is used in both British and American English with essentially the same meaning.
nounThe quality of language, behavior, or an experience that evokes pity or other strong emotion, especially through suffering, injustice, or vulnerability.
- The quality of language, behavior, or an experience that evokes pity or other strong emotion, especially through suffering, injustice, or vulnerability.
"The witness's restrained account carried such pathos that the courtroom fell silent."
"The testimony carried an unmistakable pathos that moved even the most skeptical jurors."
"Critics admired the novel's emotional depth but regarded the final act as an exercise in excessive pathos."
Pathos is normally used as an uncountable noun. The plural pathoses is rare and appears when separate instances of emotional appeal are treated as distinct.
"The novel's final chapters offer several distinct pathoses, each arising from a different kind of loss."
Pathos comes from the Greek word for suffering and is also a root of familiar words such as pathetic, pathology, and sympathy.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does pathos come from?
Pathos entered English in the early 17th century through Latin, which had borrowed the term from Greek pathos, meaning suffering or misfortune. In English, its sense developed beyond the Greek idea of suffering to denote the emotional quality of language or situations that arouse pity or compassion. Greek pathos also underlies cognate and related forms including pathetic, pathology, sympathy, and antipathy.
How pathos is actually used
Pathos is chiefly formal and literary. It can describe sincere emotional appeal, but it may also imply heightened, sentimental, or melodramatic treatment.
Easily confused with pathos
Pathos evokes heightened emotion, whereas bathos describes an abrupt transition from elevated or serious material to something trivial or absurd.