Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

pathos

UK/ˈpeɪˌθɒs/US/ˈpeɪˌθɑs/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,516 of 15,258leans written

Pathos is the quality in something that stirs pity. A moment of pathos, full of pathos, the pathos of the scene.

In rhetoric it is one of the three means of persuasion beside ethos and logos, and it is the appeal to feeling. In criticism it means a scene that moves you honestly, as against bathos, which tries and fails.

Definitions of pathos

  1. 1nounpathosThe quality in something that stirs pity.C1

    “The final scene, where the old dog waits alone at the station, is full of pathos.”

pathos is a quality.

Where it comes from

Greek pathos means suffering or feeling, from paschein, to suffer.

  1. Ancient Greek

    πάθος — suffering

  2. English, today

    pathos

From Ancient Greek πάθος (“suffering”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

pathos in the wild

  • Related to the opera buffa, opera semiseria contains elements of comedy but also of pathos, sometimes with a pastoral setting.

    Opera semiseria

  • In general, pathos refers to the use of an emotional appeal.

    Corporate pathos

  • The term "corporate pathos" describes the use of emotional arguments alongside rational explanations for organizations to convince audiences of their given position.

    Corporate pathos

  • In this case, pathos and pity are channeled into autumn and the moon.

    Lunar Paraphrase

  • Typically performed at slow and medium speeds, it is capable of inducing moods of devotion, pathos and sadness in the listeners.

    Kapi (raga)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.