Dictionary

pathetic fallacy en · NOUN

Etymology

Coined by British cultural critic John Ruskin in 1856 in his work Modern Painters. Here, fallacy does not refer to a logical fallacy but should be understood as “a falsehood, something that is untrue”, while pathetic here means “caused by an excited state of the feelings”; thus, “emotional misrepresentation”, not “contemptible illogic”.

Meanings

1. The attribution of human thoughts and feelings to inanimate objects.
   • The next generation of AI will put the pathetic fallacy on steroids. 2022 June 14, Ian Bogost, “Google’s ‘Sentient’ Chatbot Is Our Self-Deceiving Future”, in The Atlantic:
   • Taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very notable circumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is eminently characteristic of modern painting. For instance, Keats, describing a wave, breaking, out at sea, says of it Down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar, Bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence. 1856, John Ruskin, chapter XII, in Modern Painters […], volume III, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →OCLC, part IV (Of Many Things), § 2, page 184:

Forms

Relateds

reification · personification · anthropomorphism

wikipedia: Jane Eyre · wikipedia: Charlotte Brontë · wikipedia: Modern Painters