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pathetic fallacy

noun

  1. the endowment of nature, inanimate objects, etc., with human traits and feelings, as in the smiling skies; the angry sea.


pathetic fallacy

noun

  1. (in literature) the presentation of inanimate objects in nature as possessing human feelings
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Word History and Origins

Origin of pathetic fallacy1

Coined by John Ruskin in Modern Painters Vol. III, Part IV (1856)
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Example Sentences

And more than anything, they demolish the pathetic fallacy—that the world weeps as we do.

He has not 'the pathetic fallacy'; but he approaches it very nearly at times.

Compare, for this "pathetic fallacy" in painting, Titian's "Noli me tangere" (No. 270).

The vast "pathetic fallacy" makes religion of the whole of life.

It is Browning's contradiction of any one who thinks that the pathetic fallacy exists in his poetry.

To make 'Nature' really interesting you must have a touch of Wordsworthian pantheism and of Shelley's 'pathetic fallacy.'

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