bathetic

adjective

ba·thet·ic bə-ˈthe-tik

: characterized by bathos

bathetically

bə-ˈthe-ti-k(ə-)lē

adverb

Did you know?

When English speakers turned apathy into apathetic in the late 17th century, using the suffix -etic to turn the noun into the adjective, they were inspired by pathetic, the adjectival form of pathos, from Greek pathētikos. People also applied that bit of linguistic transformation to coin bathetic. English speakers added the suffix -etic to bathos, the Greek word for "depth," which in English has come to mean "triteness" or "excessive sentimentalism." The result: the ideal adjective for the incredibly commonplace or the overly sentimental.

Examples of bathetic in a Sentence

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Recording another podcast in November 2020 — after the presidential election was held but before it was called for Biden, a moment when nothing in this country seemed to be working — Biederman argued that the show is, at its heart, about the bathetic nature of decline. —New York Times, 29 Sep. 2021 For a globe-tracking narrative, some of the scenes which stand out in Episode 1 are the bathetic vignettes of Havelange’s domestic life, as his wife bears the brunt of an absent husband…. —John Hopewell, Variety, 14 Oct. 2022