Meaning & use
Bathetic
Last updated
Characterized by an abrupt, unintentional shift from a serious or elevated tone to something trivial or absurd; excessively sentimental in a way that becomes ridiculous.
See it in a sentence
The film's ending veered into bathetic melodrama that undercut its earlier tension.
Critics mocked the speech's bathetic mix of grand rhetoric and clumsy jokes.
A note on using this word
Derived from 'bathos,' a term coined by Alexander Pope for a ludicrous descent from the elevated to the commonplace in writing.
Words with a similar meaning
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