Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Excessively and objectionably sentimental. synonym: sentimental.
- adjective Archaic Having a sickening taste.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Maggoty. [Not found in this literal sense. Compare
mawky , 1.] Hence Loathsome; apt to cause loathing or nausea; sickening. - Insipid; sickening; sickly: as, mawkish champagne; mawkish sentimentality.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Apt to cause satiety or loathing; nauseous; slightly nauseating; disgusting.
- adjective Easily disgusted; squeamish; sentimentally fastidious.
- adjective Weakly sentimental; maudlin.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective archaic or dialectal Feeling
sick ,queasy . - adjective archaic
Sickening orinsipid intaste or smell. - adjective Excessively or falsely
sentimental ; showing asickly excess of sentiment.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective effusively or insincerely emotional
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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This book, small and easily digested, stopping just short of the maudlin and the mawkish, is on the whole sincere, sentimental, and skillful.
Tuesdays With Morrie: Summary and book reviews of Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom. 1997
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I hope that that song doesn't sound too much like that kind of mawkish Christian rock song.
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I hope that that song doesn't sound too much like that kind of mawkish Christian rock song.
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I hope that that song doesn't sound too much like that kind of mawkish Christian rock song.
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I hope that that song doesn't sound too much like that kind of mawkish Christian rock song.
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Professor, "mawkish" doesn't even begin to describe it.
Live-blogging the Oscars. Ann Althouse 2009
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Mr. BROWN: It's a very emotional (unintelligible) and not in a kind of mawkish way either.
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You have written about this so affectionately and without a hint of the mawkish which is a difficult balance, I find.
People Collection 2006
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There's another trope that pops up with some frequency to do the same work, only instead of focusing on the trauma experienced by individual soldiers, it peddles a kind of mawkish brotherhood-between-soldiers as the greater moral good in war.
Kick Him, Honey Ben 2010
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Even its detractors, one of whom called the book "mawkish" and poorly written, conceded the book has had an enormous influence, and it did so by virtue of its sincerity.
Politics Daily Donna Trussell 2010
yarb commented on the word mawkish
Poetical mawkish duff gen/where a buzzard is 'noble' and lands/in a tree (surprise, surprise!)/to corroborate some trite tenet/cum badly-observed Nature Note.
- Peter Reading, C, 1984
July 23, 2008
PossibleUnderscore commented on the word mawkish
See maudlin.
July 17, 2009
mohitanand commented on the word mawkish
overly sentimental to the point that it is disgusting
The film was incredibly mawkish, introducing highly likeable characters only to have them succumb to a devastating illness by the end of the movie.
October 15, 2016