Mid 16th century; earliest use found in Richard Sherry (b. c1505), schoolmaster and author. From post-classical Latin pathopoeia rhetorical figure which aims to arouse emotion in a hearer, passage of music designed to affect the emotions from Byzantine Greek παθοποιία rhetorical figure (as a Greek word in a 4th-cent. Latin author; apparently not recorded in Greek authors) from Hellenistic Greek παθο- + -ποιία.