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

The emphasis is on getting the landscape to echo, very precisely, the mood; Caron uses the phrase “pathetic fallacy”.

From The Guardian

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

The Victorian critic John Ruskin coined the phrase “pathetic fallacy” to describe the morbid attribution of human feelings to animals and inanimate objects.

From New York Times

I like a little pathetic fallacy now and again, but that is as far as it goes.

From Washington Post

The whole landscape is grey and dark with pathetic fallacy, as though you have been transported to a 19th-century novel.

From Washington Post