pathos

Pathos describes a specific kind of emotional appeal that targets the heart, creating a poignant sense of sorrow or sympathy. It is most frequently used in the context of art, literature, and rhetoric to describe the intentional creation of a mood that makes an audience feel a deep, aching compassion for a character's plight.

This term is an uncountable noun, meaning it cannot be pluralized or counted with numbers. To refer to a specific instance of this quality, one must use a partitive construction such as a sense of pathos or an element of pathos.