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Pathos vs Sadness - What's the difference?

pathos | sadness |

As nouns the difference between pathos and sadness

is that pathos is the quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, especially that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality while sadness is the state or emotion of being sad.

pathos

English

Noun

  • The quality or property of anything which touches the feelings or excites emotions and passions, especially that which awakens tender emotions, such as pity, sorrow, and the like; contagious warmth of feeling, action, or expression; pathetic quality.
  • * 1874 , Thomas Hardy, Far From The Madding Crowd, 1874:
  • His voice had a genuine pathos now, and his large brown hands perceptibly trembled.
  • (rhetoric) A writer or speaker's attempt to persuade an audience through appeals involving the use of strong emotions such as pity.
  • (literature) An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.
  • (theology, philosophy) In theology and existentialist ethics following Kierkegaard and Heidegger, a deep and abiding commitment of the heart, as in the notion of "finding your passion" as an important aspect of a fully lived, engaged life.
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    sadness

    Noun

  • (uncountable) The state or emotion of being sad.
  • (countable) An event in one's life that causes sadness.
  • She has experienced many sadnesses in her forty years.

    Synonyms

    * (state of being sad) forlornness, melancholy * (event causing sadness) misfortune, woe