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#100257 - 04/07/03 11:15 AM pathos/bathos
WhitmanO'Neill Carpal Tunnel Registered: 03/13/01 Posts: 4189 Loc: Rio Grande, Cape May County, N...	pathos : pathetic -- bathos : bathetic I've been seeing the "b" forms a lot more frequently, lately. Is this some new trend? I've always used the "p" form, pathos, unless I was making it a point to indicate a very melodramatic pathos...then I'd use bathos, but rarely. And I have never used bathetic. Don't really see any reason to.
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#100258 - 04/07/03 11:26 AM Re: pathos/bathos
Faldage Carpal Tunnel Registered: 12/01/00 Posts: 13653	I guess it depends on the depth of your suffering. The two words aren't really realated, nor even, in their primary, historical definitions, that near to being synonymous. Bathos: http://www.bartleby.com/61/28/B0112800.html Pathos: http://www.bartleby.com/61/21/P0112100.html Must is they've sort of fallen in to each other through apparent similarity.
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#100259 - 04/07/03 12:13 PM Re: pathos/bathos
Jackie Carpal Tunnel Registered: 03/15/00 Posts: 11578 Loc: Louisville, Kentucky	No, they really aren't, are they? I was wondering if the "fall" always has to be unintended, to qualify as being bathos; I suppose it would, or the humorous effect might be lost.
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#100260 - 04/07/03 07:36 PM Re: pathos/bathos
Zed Pooh-Bah Registered: 08/27/02 Posts: 2154 Loc: British Columbia, Canada	And sandwiched in-between bathophobia and bathrobe we have a word meaning an abrupt transition from the exalted to the commonplace. Well done.
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#100261 - 04/08/03 02:42 AM Re: pathos/bathos
Wordwind Carpal Tunnel Registered: 09/30/01 Posts: 6296 Loc: Piedmont Region of Virginia, U...	When we studied tragedy way back in 1967 in Al Biddle's English class, Mr. Biddle set up a hierarchy of sorts, classically speaking: tragedy: drama dealing with the fall of a noble figure (Remember: classic sense; not Willie Loman and the modern view) pathos: drama dealing with the tribulations of an ordinary human being bathos: drama that is overdone to the point of absurdity Tragedy and pathos were viewed as genuinely moving the emotions, but bathos was articifial because of degree of unreality. Chewing the scenery, I suppose, would be part and parcel of bathos.
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#100262 - 04/08/03 06:50 AM Re: pathos/bathos
belligerentyouth old hand Registered: 12/20/00 Posts: 1055 Loc: Berlin	Very interesting, WW. I've also seen bathos a far bit recently and had wondered about what 'exactly' it meant. I notice that the Greek etymology (depth) doesn't really seem to fit with the prevailing meaning. Clearly the meaning has wandered somewhat. The description of your English class reminded me of the classical trilogy of 'persuasive appeals' employed in Greek theatre: logos, pathos and ethos. perhaps one form of bathos is to offset all that serious stuff with a bit of comic relief.
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#100263 - 04/08/03 11:24 AM Comic Re-leaf
musick Carpal Tunnel Registered: 12/24/00 Posts: 2658 Loc: Chicago	...a far bit recently... I think you just *ripped a gash into the time-space continueum!
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#100264 - 04/08/03 12:32 PM Re: pathos/bathos
WhitmanO'Neill Carpal Tunnel Registered: 03/13/01 Posts: 4189 Loc: Rio Grande, Cape May County, N...	I always associated bathos more with the "black humor" genre such as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., for example: "Why are we born only to suffer and die?" --Slaughterhouse Five
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#100265 - 04/08/03 02:08 PM Re: Comic Re-leaf
belligerentyouth old hand Registered: 12/20/00 Posts: 1055 Loc: Berlin	re. space-time continuum I never believed in that scientific mythology anyway, nor the big bang cosmology. Teaching a divine faith in the value of measurement is just stupid. I mean, they discovered that they could not measure consciousness, and then found consciousness in everything. Around the turn of the 20th century everyone was exclaiming "God is dead!", well now science is dead, if all its dodgy theories and fishy calculations hadn't created pretty toys for the rich to have fun with and oppress others, then it would long have been publicly maligned just like table-turning. So a new mythology takes its place... The world is an idea The magician of this world is he who writes the calender. Everything *is just the way you think it is :-)
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#100266 - 04/08/03 02:18 PM Re: Comic Re-leaf
Faldage Carpal Tunnel Registered: 12/01/00 Posts: 13653	never believed in that scientific mythology You can make SWAGs about, e.g., the Big Bang and then work out what we should be able to see in the universe if those SWAGs were correct. Then you go looking for those observations; if you don't see them you make another SWAG, if you do, you fine tune your original SWAG and go lloking for new stuff. That's the scientific method. You don't just say, "Oh, it all started with a Big Bang." and leave it go at that. (This has got to be the most minuscule casus flexi for one of our threads.)
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