ANTICLIMAX (i.e., the opposite to "climax"), in rhetoric, an abrupt declension (either deliberate or unintended) on the part of a speaker or writer from the dignity of idea which he ap peared to be aiming at ; as in the following well-known distich : The great Dalhousie, he, the god of war, Lieutenant-colonel to the earl of Mar.
An anticlimax can be intentionally employed only for a jocular or satiric purpose. It frequently partakes of the nature of an tithesis, as:— Die and endow a college or a cat.
It is often difficult to distinguish between "anticlimax" and "bathos"; but the former is more decidedly a relative term. A whole speech may never rise above the level of bathos ; but a climax of greater or less elevation is the necessary antecedent of an anticlimax.