Definition of "bathetic"

The fall is indeed the archetypal bathetic motion, a sudden, surprising downward rush degrading the pretensions of posture and man's bipedal pride.

1995, Rupert D. V. Glasgow, Madness, Masks, and Laughter: An Essay on Comedy, page 214

To ask what it is that Don Quixote himself believes is to enter the visionary centre of his story. This curious blend of the sublime and the bathetic does not come again until Kafka, another pupil of Cervantes, would compose stories like "The Hunter Gracchus" and "A Country Doctor".

2003 December 13, Harold Bloom, “The knight in the mirror”, in The Guardian‎

It is possible that Shillibeer's bathetic end is the reason buses did not become universally known as 'Shillibeers'. Some operators had called their buses Shillibeers.

2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, page 20