bathos
noun

- an abrupt, often ludicrous change from a lofty or serious tone to the ordinary or trivial; an unintentional anticlimax

- the sudden appearance of the commonplace in otherwise elevated matter or style; exceptional commonplaceness, triteness

- insincere or overdone pathos; sentimentalism

Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Oxford English Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

In 1728 Alexander Pope published a mischievous little essay called "Peri Bathous; or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry," a straight-faced manual on how to write badly. It parodied a revered ancient Greek treatise by Longinus titled "Peri Hupsous" ("On the Sublime"). Where Longinus had praised hupsos, meaning height or loftiness, Pope reached for its opposite: bathos, the Greek word for depth or the bottom. His prank was to instruct fellow poets in the fine craft of plunging, of reaching for the heavens and landing face-first in the mud.

The Greek bathos comes from bathys, simply "deep." Before Pope borrowed it, the word carried no comic association at all. He gave it its modern English meaning almost single-handedly: the failed leap toward grandeur that collapses into the silly or the flat,... setting something enormous beside something tiny and pretending not to notice the gap.

BTW, please don't confuse bathos with pathos,... which means deep sadness and suffering (one of our false quiz definitions today).

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COCO THE CLOWN

A man goes to see a doctor. He says he is deeply depressed, that life feels harsh, cruel, and completely gray. He feels utterly alone in a bleak world, and the weight of his immeasurable sorrow is becoming almost too much to bear.
The doctor examines him, smiles warmly, and says:

"The treatment is simple! The circus is in town tonight, and they have the world's most brilliant performer. Go and see Coco the Clown. No one can possibly remain sad after watching his show. It will cure your heart and make you laugh yourself well."

The man looks at the doctor with profound sadness, and says: “But doctor... I am Coco the Clown!”

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SYNONYMS

anticlimax, banality, BATHOS, comedown, deflation, descent, dying fall, false pathos, fizzle, flatness, letdown, mawkishness, sentimentality, sloppiness, soppiness, the art of sinking, trite ending, triviality

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SMUGGLE today's word into a conversation today, say something like:

"A well-known, albeit sad, example of BATHOS concerns Coco the Clown."

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