[a. Gr. βάθος depth. First made Eng. in sense 2 by Pope’s treatise, the title being a parody on Longinus’s περὶ ὕψους; subseq. in the more etymological sense 1.]
1. Depth; lowest phase, bottom.
[1638. Sanderson, Serm., II. 101. There is such a height, and depth, and length, and breadth in that love; such a βάθος in every dimension of it.]
1758. Johnson, Idler, No. 79, ¶ 7. Declining … to the very bathos of insipidity.
1840. Marryat, Olla Podr. (Rtldg.), 276. I am at the very bathos of stupidity.
2. Rhet. Ludicrous descent from the elevated to the commonplace in writing or speech; anti-climax.
1727. Pope, etc., Art of Sinking, i. While a plain and direct Road is pav’d to their ὔψος, or sublime; no Track has been yet chalk’d out, to arrive at our βάθος, or profund.
1787. J. Andrews, Anecdotes, s.v. Bathos, Had Ovid introduced this supper of Niobé between the death of her children and her own metamorphosis into stone, he would have furnished us, with a compleat instance of the Bathos.
1875. McLaren, Serm., Ser. II. xii. 211. It is as absurd bathos as to say, the essentials of a judge are integrity, learning, and an erinine robe!
3. Hence gen. A ‘come-down’ in one’s career.
1814. T. Jefferson, Writ. (1830), IV. 240. How meanly has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present!
1841. Marryat, Poacher, xxviii. It was rather a bathos … to sink from a gentleman’s son to an under usher.
