bathos

noun

Etymology: Borrowed from Ancient Greek βάθος (báthos, “depth”). Employed ironically following Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous, lampooning various errors in contemporary writers.

1. Overdone or treacly attempts to inspire pathos.

   “I like you more than I can say; but I'll not sink into a bathos of sentiment...”

2. A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to

   “While a plain and direct Road is pav'd to their ὐψος, or sublime; no Track has been yet chalk'd out to arrive at our βάθος, or profund.”

3. A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:
4. A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:
5. A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:
6. A risible failure on the part of a work of art to properly affect its audience, particularly owing to:
7. The ironic use of such failure for satiric or humorous effect.
8. A nadir, a low point particularly in one's career.

   “How meanly has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present!”

   “I know what he suffers now, for instance, exactly: it is merely a beginning of what he shall suffer, though. And he’ll never be able to emerge from his bathos of coarseness and ignorance.”