PATHOS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pathos mean? 

• PATHOS (noun)
  The noun PATHOS has 3 senses:

1. a quality that arouses emotions (especially pity or sorrow)

2. a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others

3. a style that has the power to evoke feelings

  Familiarity information: PATHOS used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PATHOS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A quality that arouses emotions (especially pity or sorrow)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

pathos; poignancy

Context example:

the film captured all the pathos of their situation

Hypernyms ("pathos" is a kind of...):

quality (an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

commiseration; pathos; pity; ruth

Context example:

the blind are too often objects of pity

Hypernyms ("pathos" is a kind of...):

fellow feeling; sympathy (sharing the feelings of others (especially feelings of sorrow or anguish))

Derivation:

pathetic (deserving or inciting pity)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A style that has the power to evoke feelings

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("pathos" is a kind of...):

expressive style; style (a way of expressing something (in language or art or music etc.) that is characteristic of a particular person or group of people or period)

 Context examples 

She beamed upon him through her terror-filled eyes, and the pathos of it cut me to the heart.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

"My true friend," she said, in a faint voice, but with untellable pathos, "My true friend, and his! Oh, guard him, and give me peace!"

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Humor and pathos make it alive, and you have found your style at last.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

What unutterable pathos was in his voice!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A heroine in a hack post-chaise is such a blow upon sentiment, as no attempt at grandeur or pathos can withstand.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that he well deserved.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The whole scene was an unutterable mixture of comedy and pathos.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

My dear children, pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos, this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn you, that this girl, who might be one of God's own lambs, is a little castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)