Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A quality, as of an experience or a work of art, that arouses feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow.
  • noun The feeling, as of sympathy or pity, so aroused.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That quality or character, as of a speech, an expression of the countenance, a work of art, etc., which awakens the emotion of pity, compassion, or sympathy; a power or influence that moves or touches the feelings; feeling.
  • noun Specifically In art, the quality of the personal, ephemeral, emotional, or sensual, as opposed to that, of the ideal, or ethos.
  • noun Suffering.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun That quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, esp., that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality.
  • noun The quality or character of those emotions, traits, or experiences which are personal, and therefore restricted and evanescent; transitory and idiosyncratic dispositions or feelings as distinguished from those which are universal and deep-seated in character; -- opposed to ethos.
  • noun Suffering; the enduring of active stress or affliction.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun That quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, esp., that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality.
  • noun rhetoric A writer's attempt to persuade an audience through appeals involving the use of strong emotions not strictly limited to pity.
  • noun literature An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.
  • noun theology, philosophy In theology and existentialist ethics following Kierkegaard and Heidegger, a deep and abiding commitment of the heart, as in the notion of "finding your passion" as an important aspect of a fully lived, engaged life.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a style that has the power to evoke feelings
  • noun a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others
  • noun a quality that arouses emotions (especially pity or sorrow)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Greek, suffering; see kwent(h)- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek πάθος (pathos, "suffering").

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Examples

  • It is the one great weakness of Dickens as a great writer, that he did try to make that sudden sadness, that abrupt pity, which we call pathos, a thing quite obvious, infectious, public, as if it were journalism or the measles.

    Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens 1905

  • But in place of Hardy's pathos is a perverse little smile that's blessedly contagious.

    'Tamara' And 'Funny Story': Uneasy, But Amusing 2010

  • Prep — a real novel, not the result of a sales-team brainstorm — derives much of its pathos from the fact that the main character is never sure whether the boy she loves so much, and has had so many sexual encounters with, might actually constitute that magical, bygone character: her “boyfriend.”

    What Girls Want 2008

  • Prep — a real novel, not the result of a sales-team brainstorm — derives much of its pathos from the fact that the main character is never sure whether the boy she loves so much, and has had so many sexual encounters with, might actually constitute that magical, bygone character: her “boyfriend.”

    What Girls Want 2008

  • My central contention with regard to these writers 'pessimistic conceptions of freedom and their overall anti-modern pathos is that we ought to read them less as a separate current opposing the dominant narrative of nineteenth-century liberalism and its identification with rights, institutions, and the competitive individualism they foster than as a

    The Melancholic Gift: Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Philosophy and Fiction 2008

  • Morrison nails the essential pathos from the get go.

    Archive 2006-02-01 Lou Anders 2006

  • No other show has sought, as its central mission, to mine comedy and pathos from the experience of aging baby boomers.

    September 2006 2006

  • The pathos is sweet, deep and genuine; tender, simple and true, utterly unlike much of our modern tinsel.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Taking full advantage, he produced an entire cliché-defying book — one that despite a built-in pathos had an overwhelmingly prankish tone.

    A Close Read 2005

  • Taking full advantage, he produced an entire cliché-defying book — one that despite a built-in pathos had an overwhelmingly prankish tone.

    A Close Read 2005

Comments

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  • One of the less popular Greek islands, perhaps?

    October 13, 2007

  • Right next to ethos and logos, right?

    October 14, 2007

  • And Legos...

    October 14, 2007