Definitions lovingly hoodlumed (nonce)
from the OED website.
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BATHOS (b  th s , -thôs)
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 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; anticlimax.
1727 POPE Bathos 71 While a plain and direct road is paved to their , or sublime; no track has been yet chalked out to arrive at our , 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 ermine 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.
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