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 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

Mostly, heckling is just one example of the pathetic fallacy of fandom, that those of us in the seats are part of the action, essential to our team’s success—that we matter.

From The New Yorker ● Aug. 8, 2014

Charlotte Brontë had, in the highest degree, that which Ruskin has called the "pathetic fallacy," the eye which beholds nature coloured by the light of the inner soul.

From Studies in Early Victorian Literature by Harrison, Frederic