Bathos
This article is part of the Figures of Speech course. You may choose to follow it in a structured way, or read each item separately.
- Figures of comparison
- Figures of meaning
- bathos or anticlimax
- a descent, either disappointing or ludicrous
- circumlocution
- talking around the subject
- climax
- propositions or ideas rising in force
- hyperbole
- exaggeration
- irony
- words with a hidden meaning
- litotes
- using double negatives to make an understatement
- meiosis
- making an understatement
- oxymoron and paradox
- words that contradict each other
- pun
- a play upon words
- satire
- social or political comment through mockery or scorn
- sarcasm
- a bitter gibe or taunt
- Figures of construction
- Figures of sound patterning
- Miscellaneous Figures
Bathos - pronounced BAY-thos, (IPA: /'beɪ θɒs/) - is a figure of speech. It applies to a whole text, or a substantial part of it. (There is an associated adjective: bathetic.) Bathos is an anti-climax, usually so strongly marked that it becomes funny.
OED calls it "Ludicrous descent from the elevated to the commonplace in writing or speech; anticlimax", and goes on to define anticlimax as "the opposite of climax ... the addition of a particular which, instead of heightening the effect, suddenly lowers it or makes it ludicrous." There is an adjective anticlimactic. (See also climax, of which anticlimax is, obviously, the opposite.)
- Etymological note: Bathos is a transliteration of the Greek noun βάθος (băthos, ‘depth’), which, in the context of literary criticism, was used in the same way as its English descendant.
