pathos

Plural: pathoses

Noun

• A quality that evokes pity or sadness.
• a quality that arouses emotions (especially pity or sorrow)
  • "the film captured all the pathos of their situation"
• a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others
• a style that has the power to evoke feelings
• The quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, especially that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality.
• A form of rhetoric in which the writer or speaker uses emotional appeals to the audience as the main form of persuasion.
• An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.
• In theology and existentialist ethics following Kierkegaard and Heidegger, a deep and abiding commitment of the heart, as in the notion of "finding your passion" as an important aspect of a fully lived, engaged life.
• Suffering; the enduring of active stress or affliction.

Examples

• The pathos of his opponent’s desperate plays almost made him feel guilty for winning so easily.

Synonyms

commiseration, pity, poignancy, ruth, patheticness

Related Words

antipathy, apathy, empathy, pathetic, pathic, pathogen, pathology, psychopathy, sympathy