From Latin pathicus, from Ancient Greek παθικός (pathikós), from πάθος (páthos, “suffering, feeling”), from πάσχω (páskhō, “to feel, to suffer”).
Meanings
(literary) Synonym of bottom: a passive usually-male partner in homosexual anal intercourse.
In England the vices in fashion are whoring & drinking, in Turkey, Sodomy & smoking, we prefer a girl and a bottle, they a pipe and pathic. 1810, Lord Byron, letter (to Henry Drury), 3 May 1810
But in those days I was Paul Dempster, who had been made to forget it and take a name from the side of a barn, and be the pathic of a perverted drug-taker. 1975, Robertson Davies, World of Wonders:
Clermont (known to his friends as Cordelia) was a nancy, a pathic, a male varlet, a masculine whore. 1976, Robert Nye, Falstaff:
And enough of these gooey saints with a look of pathic dismay as if they getting fucked up the ass and try not to pay any mind. 1962 [1959], William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch, New York: Grove Press, page 115: