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.
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.htmlPathos:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/21/P0112100.htmlMust is they've sort of fallen in to each other through apparent similarity.
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.
And sandwiched in-between bathophobia and bathrobe we have a word meaning an abrupt transition from the exalted to the commonplace. Well done.
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.
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.
...a far bit recently...
I think you just *ripped a gash into the time-space continueum!
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
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 :-)
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.)
maybe crispy is one of those people who read Kuhn's
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and thought it was about a
paradigm shift in the
weltschmerz.
---
pop quiz: is this post bathetic or merely pathetic? show your work.
show your work.
like some sort of graphical chart?
pop quiz: is this post bathetic or merely pathetic? show your work.
Workings:
Umm.
Ummmm. Ummmm. Ummmmmmmmmmmm. Ummmmmm.
Mmmmm. Mmmmf. Ummmm.
Oh shit, bathetic!
Well, you asked.
- Pfranz
Well, what do you guys show? Your work or your workings? On the mainland we'd always used work but here on The Rock, it's workings (just to be contrary, I suppose).
Workings down under. At least in my little part of it.
Workings here on this fish
work in the various parts of the US I've occasioned to show.
Work where I come from
No, Connie, haven't been able to work out where you "come from"...
haven't been able to work out
'S'matter, Juan, won't let you into the health clubs?
One would hear "show your work" in the Pacific Northwest.
"Workings" to me would mean "mechanisms," such as the workings of a machine.....
[white font alert]
Anybody got change for a pair o' dimes?
Seems to be casting a shadow on white lettering by announcing it...
*************
"Workings" most certainly never needs, but usually-always gets "inner" as a adjectifier.
"Workings" makes me think of inbody plumbing.
"Observe the watch works," Tom said timely.
pair o' dimes
Good one, CB!
working girl
(just another shade of semantics...a double entendre, even...could mean you work retail, ya know!
)
working girl... retailnot going to go there...
RE: working girl... retail
vs. working girl, wholesale?
Only if you can organise mass production ...
I guess it's all down to the right production techniques.
...vs. working girl, wholesale?
Why the extra w?