What's the difference between bathetic and schmaltzy?

Bathetic


Definition:

  • (a.) Having the character of bathos.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They held their televised press conference outside the White House in a snowstorm, a nature-made bathetic fallacy.)
  • (2) Going in the other direction, this gridded tablecloth has a rather more bathetic and English character.
  • (3) Townsend tells me in passing, bathetically, that the prison's main purpose has never been to produce quality radio, so she just has to accept it when prisoners get moved on in the middle of their course.
  • (4) In the novel's final section, "Free Women 5", Lessing gives us its quiet, bathetic conclusion.
  • (5) Finally, there are all the knowing literary references: Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Ealing comedy, Michael Frayn, Andrew Marvell; there are quotes from everyone from war reporter Nick Tomalin to Shakespeare’s Tempest – a potentially bathetic game for a novel that has the two clunkiest opening sentences I’ve seen for a long time, but on the whole he gets away with it.
  • (6) The emphasis was always on the comedy, the foibles and peccadilloes of the characters, a gentle cynicism about the ways of the world, a joy in puns, a love of irritating footnotes, a relish for the bathetic puncturing of the bombastic – and above all an irrepressible and infectious silliness.
  • (7) Her home turf is bathetic provincial comedy, of the type found on flyers for pizza takeaways, or in the Victoria Woodish tale of a motorcyclist with three Creme Eggs in his gob, suffocating under his crash helmet on the A63.
  • (8) When reactions might be anything from acute distress to sniggers, those who want Auschwitz to educate new generations face a continual struggle with visitor behaviour: not too bathetic, or fanciful, yet not too remote, either.

Schmaltzy


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Behind the dancing girls and schmaltzy lyrics that usually characterise pop songs, these men act as the all-oppressing eye of the industry: telling female singers that weight loss and sexual objectification are the only feasible routes to stardom; stripping down women in music videos to their underwear while leaving their male counterparts untouched.
  • (2) Nine years after Jonathan Franzen derided Oprah Winfrey's choice of "schmaltzy, one-dimensional" novels for her book club, becoming the first author to be formally disinvited to appear on her show, these two giants of American cultural life appear to have buried the hatchet.
  • (3) And that schmaltzy Bronner's experience wouldn't be complete without lashings of cheesy slogans.
  • (4) But just in case you think we've gone all Christmassy, sugary and schmaltzy, check out some fun in a sports shop once the customers have left and former Manchester United midfielder Paul Scholes, showing that he has still got what it takes, scoring a goal from his own half.
  • (5) And while it's true that gridiron jocks can't seem to perform unless interrupted every 10 seconds by schmaltzy corporations peddling their wares, brass bands booming across the pitch and cheerleaders wiggling and jiggling like wind-up titillators, it's also true that American spectators do at least get what they're promised - it may take five hours but eventually they will see 60 minutes of football.
  • (6) As the high emotion of his protracted and schmaltzy press conference today exposed once again – complete with a refusal to admit to having made the wrong call, and the bizarre insistence that the war had made the world safer – it is always important to him not only to be serving the national interest, but a greater good too.
  • (7) It is, of course, notable that David Cameron, in his schmaltzy, feelgood speech to his party yesterday, made little particular reference to the row over child benefit.
  • (8) Franzen does not shy away from other topics that have proved controversial for him in the past, including his rift with Oprah Winfrey in 2001, which saw the chat show host uninvite the award-winning author from her book club after he said the “schmaltzy, one-dimensional” novels she championed made him cringe.
  • (9) Franzen followed these comments with an appearance on National Public Radio where he talked about the "split" between the "high-art literary tradition" and "entertaining books" and an interview at an Oregon bookstore where he said that Winfrey had "picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional … [books] … that I cringe, myself, even though I think she's really smart and she's really fighting the good fight".
  • (10) Like Titanic and its schmaltzy My Heart Will Go On, Sea of Blood produced a hit song: My Heart Will Remain Faithful.
  • (11) With its orange camo-print uniforms, scarlet berets, sentimental gatherings and schmaltzy music, it looks like a fascist militia as imagined by JG Ballard.
  • (12) Lotan and McBride talked about Facebook’s recent “Look Back” videos, constructed by an algorithm to show individual Facebook users their key moments from their time on the social network, to be shared with friends as a schmaltzy video.
  • (13) There was even a schmaltzy movie – You've Got Mail – based around its email service.
  • (14) It was precisely because Juno's screenwriter, former stripper Diablo Cody, had given Juno such sassy dialogue (think Buffy, think My So-Called Life, think Dawson's Creek before it got schmaltzy) that Page took the part.
  • (15) Unease about being categorised as a popular novelist – "schmaltzy and one-dimensional" – was what led to his being disinvited by Oprah Winfrey's book club in 2001; since he was "uncomfortable and conflicted", she said ("a pompous prick", as someone else put it), it would be wrong to have him on the show.
  • (16) Kenneth Clarke (4) The justice secretary was one of the few who had seen the cabinet room before last May, and in that first assembly he provided a note of discord that could have been scripted to avoid things getting too schmaltzy, by being told off for "engaging in another conversation".

Words possibly related to "bathetic"

Words possibly related to "schmaltzy"