sentimental
[sen-tuh-men-tl]
adjective
expressive of or appealing to sentiment, especially the tender emotions and feelings, as love, pity, or nostalgia: a sentimental song.
pertaining to or dependent on sentiment: We kept the old photograph for purely sentimental reasons.
weakly emotional; mawkishly susceptible or tender: the sentimental Victorians.
characterized by or showing sentiment or refined feeling.
RELATED CONTENT
Lexical Investigations: SentimentalSentimental, a word intrinsically tied to Romanticism, entered English in the mid-eighteenth century, about 50 years before the Romantic era was in full swing. Scholars officially date the Romantic period from around 1800 to 1850, with the publication of William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads in 1798 marking the palpable beginning of the era. In 1800, Wordsworth published a new edition of Lyrical Ballads, this time including …
RELATED WORDS
sugary, sentimental, gooey, sappy, saccharine, syrupy, honeyed, cheesy, corny, mushy, drippy, cornball, cutesy, oversweet
Nearby words
- senti,
- sentience,
- sentient,
- sentiently,
- sentiment,
- sentimental value,
- sentimentalism,
- sentimentalist,
- sentimentality,
- sentimentalize
Origin of sentimental
SYNONYMS FOR sentimental
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019
Examples from the Web for over-sentimental
sentimental
adjective
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
sentimental
1749, "pertaining to or characterized by sentiment," from sentiment + -al (1). At first without pejorative connotations; meaning "having too much sentiment, apt to be swayed by prejudice" had emerged by 1793 (implied in sentimentalist). Related: Sentimentally.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper