bathetic
- adjective
- /bəˈθɛtɪk/
- Literature
- Her speech about love was so bathetic that the audience couldn't help but roll their eyes instead of feeling moved.
Examples
-
At first glance, The Terranauts seems to use E2 as a staging ground for irreverent, often bathetic drama of its human characters.
Academic text (2018) -
Well then, you might want to slightly refine your strategy: perhaps highlight actual user behavior instead of some bathetic metaphor, or worse, random furniture.
Blog text (22) -
Pardon me, I grow bathetic.
Fiction book (1999) -
At the very least, it should seem bathetic for him to treat the struggle with his "character of prestige" as a kind of Armageddon.
Academic text (1999) -
When the miracle is accomplished and Frederick asks what happened, the girl's angry response, "You fucking died, you stupid bastard," is comprehensible but comically bathetic compared with the deep wonder, or the tears of joy one might expect at the unexpected return to life of a loved one.
Academic text (2001) -
This subtlety is indeed reflected in Chaucer's narrative discourse, which does not characteristically take such sudden and bathetic turns as Ariosto's or Byron's.
Academic text (2003) -
The final sentence, 212 words long, is a rhetorical tour de force in which the "orator for freedom" betrays the bathetic and devious nature of his oration by the fact that his "finest sentence" is not a sentence at all, or, to be more precise, is a sentence of a different sort.
Academic text (2001) -
In the evenings and on weekends, we played Elza's favorite tapes: songs by the Blues Project, Randy Newman, Carole King, as well as a rather bathetic symphony that Elza herself had composed, which her college orchestra had recently performed and recorded as a memorial to her.
Fiction book (1996) -
Though a stanza such as this may serve an unsettling, bathetic function, which is perhaps its purpose in the abortive anecdotes of the Monk's Tale, it is not in itself especially memorable or pleasing, for it arouses expectations without entirely satisfying them.
Academic text (2003) -
The movie was criticized for its bathetic attempts at emotional depth, which felt more silly than touching.
Synonyms
Having strong warm feelings about people or things from the past, often too emotional
Feels too sentimental and silly, like a movie or card
Showing feelings in a way that is too strong
Showing too much emotion in a way that seems silly or fake
Showing fake feeling and too much emotion
Too emotional in a way that feels silly or fake
Showing strong feelings rather than careful thought
Too sentimental or brightly decorated and not in good taste
Too emotional in a way that seems silly or not sincere
Showing too much feeling about small things
Showing too much emotion in a way that feels silly
Being too sweet or emotional in a way that seems false
Too sweet or emotional in a way that makes you feel sick
Showing too much feeling for the situation
Too emotional in a way that feels false or silly
Showing feelings that are not real and too sweet
Too emotional in a way that feels silly or fake
Too emotional and sentimental in a way that seems silly
Too sweet or emotional in a way that feels false
Overly sentimental and emotional in a way that seems false
Showing strong, simple feelings in a way that seems fake
Being very emotional in a way that feels fake
Too sweet and sentimental in tone or style
Showing too much emotion in a way that seems exaggerated
Too sweet and emotional so it feels false
Too sentimental and not sincere
Being too emotional in a cheap, false way
Too sentimental and weak in feeling, often seeming false
Showing strong feelings that make people feel sad or moved
Too emotional and sweet in a way that feels fake
Antonyms
How Sentimental
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
The word bathetic comes from the Greek root bath- and the older word bathos, which mean 'depth'. People later used bathos to describe a sudden fall from serious to silly, so bathetic describes something that tries to be deeply emotional but feels fake, overdone, or even unintentionally funny.