Pathos

WORD OF THE DAY

pathos / noun / PAY-thahss

Definition
1: an element in experience or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion
2: an emotion of sympathetic pity

Examples
"It's all in good fun, though. This is Maverick's movie, as the title declares. As a character study of an iconic hero, Cruise and Kosinski do fine work, plumbing pathos and power out of a mythic One Last Flight."
— Eric Webb, Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, 27 May 2022

There is a pathos to the deflated certainties that left the Washington lawyer Leonard Garment weeping, inconsolable, outside the Senate chamber as the debate was ended.
— Garry Wills, New York Times Book Review, 10 Sept. 1989

Did You Know?
The Greek word páthos means "experience, misfortune, emotion, condition,” and comes from Greek path-, meaning “experience, undergo, suffer.”
In English, pathos usually refers to the element in an experience or in an artistic work that makes us feel compassion, pity, or sympathy.
The word is a member of a big family: empathy is the ability to share someone else’s feelings. Pathetic (in its gentlest uses) describes things that move us to pity.
Though pathology is not literally "the study of suffering," it is "the study of diseases." Other relatives of pathos include sympathy, apathy, and antipathy.