ba·thet·ic

(bə-thĕt′ĭk)

adj.

Characterized by bathos.

[Probably blend of bathos and pathetic.]

ba·thet′i·cal·ly adv.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

bathetic

(bəˈθɛtɪk)

adj

containing or displaying bathos

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

ba•thet•ic

(bəˈθɛt ɪk)

adj.

characterized by bathos.

[1825–35; bath (os) + -etic, on the model of pathetic]

ba•thet′i•cal•ly, adv.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.

bathetic - effusively or insincerely emotional; "a bathetic novel"; "maudlin expressions of sympathy"; "mushy effusiveness"; "a schmaltzy song"; "sentimental soap operas"; "slushy poetry"

hokey, kitschy, maudlin, mawkish, schmaltzy, schmalzy, sentimental, slushy, soppy, soupy, mushy, drippy

emotional - of more than usual emotion; "his behavior was highly emotional"

bathetic

adjective

Affectedly or extravagantly emotional:

gushy, maudlin, mawkish, romantic, sentimental, slushy, sobby, soft, soppy.

Informal: gooey, mushy, schmaltzy, sloppy, soupy.

Slang: drippy, sappy, tear-jerking.

Translations

bathetic

[bəˈθetɪk] ADJ → que pasa de lo sublime a lo trivial

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

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References in periodicals archive

The buildings are ludicrous and the quality bathetic where sound walls are 'supported' by hollow 'buttresses' and steel lintels masquerade behind thin boards as solid oaken lintels while fake nineteenth-century street lights perch on fake eighteenth-century cottages.

Prince Charming?

It is true that three of Behn's feminist biographers have employed biographical interpretative techniques; nevertheless, it seems intemperate to accuse them of writing 'at times in an embarrassingly bathetic way, using a critical vocabulary which is pure Mills and Boon' (p.

Sexual Freedom in Restoration Literature

In "Tiny, Smiling Daddy" (may it be anthologized endlessly), a suburban father is stunned to learn that his daughter has published an essay about him in the magazine Self, written in bathetic self-help prose.

Because They Wanted To: Stories

Although she had once written a particularly bathetic sonnet 'To Miss C - on being desired to attempt writing a comedy' it was not an impossible step from the mordant sarcasm she could deploy so splendidly to a humour which if not quite uproarious is charmingly self-deprecating and light of touch.

The Poems of Charlotte Smith

The New York Times really tugged at my heartstrings when it repeated Kissinger's bathetic assessment that Nixon "would have been a great, great man had somebody loved him."

The Nixon amnesia

And there are some fantastically bathetic formulations, of which my favourite is the opening of Chapter 6: 'It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that in the last two decades of literary studies Wordsworth has become an increasingly problematic poet.' You don't say?

Romantic Voices: Identity and Ideology in British Poetry, 1789-1850

Such hefty subject matter, filtered by the artist through the commodified affect of the meme, slides into the bathetic. As Puppies hitches the material of lived experience to the ready vehicles of the pop landscape, rerouting the meaning of established signs to invest them with emotional charge, the subject flees into iconicity.

Puppies Puppies: Balice Hertling

The final rooms of the exhibition are bathetic. Cut off from modern art, Malevich returned to earlier painting styles and produced a series of tepid Biedermeier portraits.

Square roots: Michael Prodger on a vast exhibition that reflects the full scale of Malevich's artistic ambition

What has been delightfully knowing increasingly turns bathetic. The younger performers play their characters as the stereotypes they are (Joseph Drake's John is a hunched sniveler, James Norton's Geoffrey a cold-hearted schemer, and so on), but never play at the level of commitment plus comment that Lindsay pulls off so well.

Whose 'Lion' is it, anyway?

"Shapland presents a rich absorbing image with incident, which over its six minutes contrives to be banal, bathetic, dramatic, mysterious, deflating and to my mind like much of his work, moving."

Gallery buys new-media DVD work of award winner

And, in contrast to so many visual artists, Davis was verbally articulate, capable of an epigrammatic felicity and humor worthy of a poet: "A degree of sentimentality can be tolerated in people, but in painting the words bathetic and emetic are synonymous."

"Stuart Davis: Major Late Paintings" at Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, New York. April 9-May 11, 2002. (Exhibition note)