Bathos Definition: Bathos comes from a Greek word meaning “depth”. An author or poet uses bathos when they begin to write a lot of metaphors, descriptions, or ideas to try and create a more emotional or passionate piece of work. This usually occurs to make the piece of work more comedic. This happens usually with an abrupt turn from the serious to silly, adding a comedic effect.

Examples from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night's Dream”:

When the mechanics put on their performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. 

Function:

In this example from A Midsummer’s Night Dream, bathos is used very subtly. It adds more humor to the play because the mechanics themselves must be unaware of how bad they are acting. This combines the tragedy of the story with bad acting, which helps to add more emotion and humor to the play.

Other Example (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy):

“For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.” This is an example of bathos by having the expectation that something is going to happen and then after a few seconds still nothing happens adding a comedic effect.

Non-original Mnemonic: can be found here

Original Mnemonic:

BATH-SOap