pathetic fallacy

American  

noun

1. the endowment of nature, inanimate objects, etc., with human traits and feelings, as in the smiling skies; the angry sea.

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pathetic fallacy British  

noun

1. (in literature) the presentation of inanimate objects in nature as possessing human feelings

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Etymology

Origin of pathetic fallacy

Coined by John Ruskin in Modern Painters Vol. III, Part IV (1856)

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

pathetic fallacy

With pathetic fallacy worthy of Shakespeare, rain and wind lashed the island of Manhattan as I clutched my voice recorder from the back seat of my taxi heading uptown.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 25, 2019

I even think I said it someone: “Maybe the pathetic fallacy is thinking it’s a fallacy.”

From Slate ● Mar. 16, 2018

In 1856, in the third volume of “Modern Painters,” Ruskin criticized writers for attributing human emotions to the natural world, a tendency that he famously termed the pathetic fallacy.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 23, 2015

In literature there’s a thing called the pathetic fallacy, a conceit whereby characters take on the traits of their surrounding environment.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 9, 2015

They follow in fact upon a more primary type of living, acting form, a type to which the "pathetic fallacy" or any other manner of psychologizing may not apply.

From Creative Intelligence Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude by Boyd H. Bode