Pathetic

pa·thet·ic fal·la·cy

Noun:

The attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things or animals, esp. in art and literature.

pathetic fallacy
n.
The attribution of human emotions or characteristics to inanimate objects or to nature.


pathetic fallacy, the poetic convention whereby natural phenomena which cannot feel as humans do are described as if they could: thus rain‐clouds may ‘weep’, or flowers may be ‘joyful’ in sympathy with the poet's (or imagined speaker's) mood. The pathetic fallacy normally involves the use of some metaphor which falls short of full‐scale personification in its treatment of the natural world.

pathetic fallacy Projecting or displacing human emotions and feelings onto things that do not have them, although they may prompt emotions in us.