pathos

Meaning

1. (countable, uncountable) 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.
2. (countable, rhetoric, uncountable) A form of rhetoric in which the writer or speaker uses emotional appeals to the audience as the main form of persuasion.
3. (countable, uncountable) An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.
4. (countable, uncountable) 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.
5. (countable, uncountable) Suffering; the enduring of active stress or affliction.

Synonyms

pity

compassion

passion

emotion

empathy

affectivity

affection

sensibility

sorrow

poignancy

feeling

sympathy

grief

commiseration

ruth

suffering

thrill

will

bitterness

sad feeling

feelings

helpless

impression

kick

misery

pitiableness

pitiful

poor

pulse

sad

☹️

sadness

sensitivity

sentimentality

sorrowfulness

Translations

patetismo

Pathos

patos

pathos

πάθος

pathétique

Trauer

patos

compaixão

páthos

pathos

pathos

Wehmut

Kummer

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈpeɪˌθɒs/

Etymology

From Ancient Greek πάθος (páthos, “suffering”).