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What does pathos mean?

Looking for the meaning or definition of the word pathos? Here's what it means.

Noun
  1. 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.
  2. (rhetoric) A writer or speaker's attempt to persuade an audience through appeals involving the use of strong emotions such as pity.
  3. (literature) An author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.
  4. (theology) 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.
  5. Suffering; the enduring of active stress or affliction.
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Examples
She is somehow too robustly formidable, and the idea of killing her doesn't have the right mixture of pathos and horror.
He arranges a side-by-side comparison of Oedipus' irony and pathos with the wildness of his passion.
Menand suggests that the author's avoidance of such metaphysical pathos was what made much of his writing awkward and dry.
They present a perfect blend of pathos, wonder, derision, fear, disgust and fury.
Postle has a knack for combining slapstick comedy and pathos, which is very effective in this instance.
Some stories are much too good to be true, tales so full of emotion and pathos that they compel a journalist to step back and reconsider.

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