bathetic

[buh-thet-ik]

adjective

1. displaying or characterized by bathos.

   the bathetic emotionalism of soap operas.

Other Word Forms

• bathetically adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of bathetic¹

1825–35; bath(os) + -etic, on the model of pathetic

Example Sentences

Will Close, as England’s captain and star player, Harry Kane, plays up the striker’s famously laconic manner, providing a bathetic counterpoint to the coach’s earnest rhetoric.

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This bathetic prelude is perhaps meant to communicate the man’s impudence, but it also readies the audience for a film of modest ambitions.

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The action sequences, simultaneously thrilling, slapstick and bathetic, served the larger purpose of “Barry,” to tell the story of an antihero without celebrating his antiheroism.

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That they’re all various degrees of bonkers and/or bathetic is the joke, though it’s not always easy to distinguish between this more strenuously underlined absurdity and regular Wesworld whimsy.

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All Kubrick did was make “The Shining” 10 times scarier and 75 percent less bathetic than the book.

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