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

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

Climate change is, of course, a kind pathetic fallacy come to life, our own contempt for nature reflected back to us in a distorted and grotesque form.

From Slate • Apr. 29, 2016

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

The pathetic fallacy hardly intrudes, so acute are the observations.

From The Guardian • Apr. 22, 2013

Not at all, however, in the fashion of the "pathetic fallacy."

From Robert Browning by Herford, C. H. (Charles Harold)