sentimentality
sentimentalities
Sentimentality is a quality of being overly, dramatically emotional — sad or loving or nostalgic. Your sentimentality on her eightieth birthday might make your down-to-earth grandmother roll her eyes.
When your emotions go overboard, becoming a little theatrical or false, that's sentimentality. A person's sentimentality might come in handy if a job as a greeting card writer opens up, or a role in a community theater's production of "Les Misérables." Sentimentality comes from the adjective sentimental, which is rooted in the Medieval Latin sentimentum, "feeling, affection or opinion."
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the quality of being falsely emotional in a maudlin way
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synonyms:
drippiness, mawkishness, mushiness, sloppiness, soupiness
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types:
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corn
something sentimental or trite
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schmaltz, schmalz, shmaltz
(Yiddish) excessive sentimentality in art or music
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sentimentalism
a predilection for sentimentality
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type of:
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emotionalism, emotionality
emotional nature or quality
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corn
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extravagant or affected feeling or emotion
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types:
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bathos, mawkishness
insincere pathos
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type of:
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sentiment
tender, romantic, or nostalgic feeling or emotion
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bathos, mawkishness
Vocabulary lists containing sentimentality
After bouncing from foster home to foster home, seventeen-year-old Muir moves in with a family that challenges her fiercely guarded independence.
An Argentinian teenager keeps her success as a soccer player — and her dreams of attending college in North America — a secret from her family.
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