Term coined by Ruskin to describe a tendency of poets (particularly Wordsworth) and painters to attribute human feelings to nature. See also anthropomorphism and personification.

In literary criticism, the pathetic fallacy is the description of inanimate natural objects in a manner that endows them with human feelings, thoughts and sensations. Pathetic in this usage is related to empathy (capability of feeling), and not intended to be derogatory. The term was coined by John Ruskin in his 1856 work Modern Painters, in which Ruskin wrote that the aim of pathetic fallacy was “to signify any description of inanimate natural objects that ascribes to them human capabilities, sensations, and emotions."