Word of the Day: PATHOS

A strong feeling of strong feelings

pathos (noun) - a feeling of sympathy; something that arouses pity or tenderness [pey-thos]

• bathos is something overly melodramatic or common; exaggerated pathos

BREAKDOWN: Pathos–one of the three foundations of formal rhetoric–is a literary device that appeals to emotions by building a rapport and using charged vocabulary in order to provoke specific feelings to support an argument. This word is the basis of the root PATH- meaning feeling or disease in words like empathize and sympathy.

See also: antipathy, apathetic

“Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and a vision of its resolution... They accept anguish without being overwhelmed by it. They reveal anguish as that which gives beauty its dignity and depth.” ―Stephen Batchelor

[Our Wednesday Wildcards are fascinating and important words that are not derived from classical roots.]