bathosnoun [ U ]
uk/ˈbeɪ.θɒs/us/ˈbeɪ.θɑːs/literarya sudden change from a beautiful or important subject to a silly or very ordinary one, especially when this is not intended
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Linguistic terms & linguistic style
- affricate
- allophone
- anaphor
- anaphora
- anaphoric
- double entendre
- ellipsis
- idiomatic
- irregular
- lexicology
- linguistic
- litotes
- neurolinguistics
- oxymoron
- parallelism
- philology
- portmanteau word
- semiotics
- tone language
- tongue
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Examples from literature
- He resolved to build a play not on pathos, but on bathos.
- Life is full of bathos as well as pathos.
- The closing words of the speech approached dangerously near to bathos.
- The plot shows none of those alarming pieces of incongruity and bathos which have marred some of her stories.
- This is bathos that unfortunately goes too far.