Pathos comes from the Greek πάθος (pathos), used in the 5th century BCE to signify suffering or experience, particularly in the context of emotional appeal in rhetoric.
From Greek "páthos" (suffering, experience, emotion), from the verb "páschein" (to suffer, experience, be affected), from PIE *kwent(h)- (to suffer), though some scholars reconstruct the root as *penth₂- (to tread, go, walk — with a semantic extension to "undergo, experience"). The PIE root also yields Old English "fēond" (enemy, lit. "one who causes suffering," source of "fiend") and possibly Latin "passus" (having suffered, source of "passion"). In Greek rhetoric