sentimental

[sen-tuh-men-tl]

adjective

1. expressive of or appealing to sentiment, especially the tender emotions and feelings, as love, pity, or nostalgia.

   a sentimental song.

   Synonyms: bathetic, maudlin, nostalgic, tender, romantic
   Antonyms: dispassionate

2. pertaining to or dependent on sentiment.

   We kept the old photograph for purely sentimental reasons.

3. weakly emotional; mawkishly susceptible or tender.

   the sentimental Victorians.

4. characterized by or showing sentiment or refined feeling.

   Antonyms: dispassionate

sentimental

/ ˌsɛntɪˈmɛntəl /

adjective

1. tending to indulge the emotions excessively

2. making a direct appeal to the emotions, esp to romantic feelings

3. relating to or characterized by sentiment

Other Word Forms

• sentimentally adverb
• antisentimental adjective
• antisentimentally adverb
• hypersentimental adjective
• hypersentimentally adverb
• intersentimental adjective
• oversentimental adjective
• oversentimentally adverb
• quasi-sentimental adjective
• quasi-sentimentally adverb
• semisentimental adjective
• semisentimentally adverb
• supersentimental adjective
• supersentimentally adverb
• unsentimental adjective
• unsentimentally adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of sentimental¹

First recorded in 1740–50; sentiment + -al ¹

Example Sentences

In 2023, sources told the New York Post that Rodgers had no plans to sell anytime soon because he developed a “sentimental attachment to the area.”

Read more on MarketWatch

So, I’m much less sentimental about newspapers than most of the people I know, but “Spotlight” really hit me hard.

Read more on Salon

The court heard these included a man claiming he wanted photos for a "sentimental montage" for his grandfather, and a woman saying she was buying a nearby property and needed a drainage survey.

Read more on BBC

But it strips away the sentimental veneer attaching fans to their college teams.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

The third channel promises to be a mixed bag of the freshened and familiar, today’s icons and tomorrow’s sentimental favorites, with the mix heavily tilted toward combustion.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• affectionate 
• corny 
• dreamy 
• idealistic 
• maudlin 
• mushy 
• nostalgic 
• passionate 
• saccharine 
• sappy 
• silly 
• sweet 
• tender 
• touching 
• weepy 

When To Use

What does sentimental mean?

Sentimental means expressing, appealing to, or being moved by sensitive or tender emotions, such as love, nostalgia, or pity.The state or quality of being sentimental is sentimentality. Sentimental, sentimentality, and other related words (like sentimentalism, which can be used as a synonym of sentimentality) are based on the sense of the word sentiment that refers to sensitive or tender emotions, sensitivity to such emotions, or appeal to such emotions.Such terms are especially used to imply that these emotions are exaggerated or overindulged. Sometimes, they imply that these emotions get in the way of thinking logically or being realistic.People are sometimes criticized for being overly sentimental, as in Stop being so sentimental and looking at things through rose-colored glasses, instead of seeing what they’re really like.  These kinds of criticisms are especially common in the context of art. For example, a book or film may be criticized as being overly sentimental in dealing with a historical event. This implies that it portrays the event in an idealized, simplistic, or nostalgic way instead of depicting it accurately and dealing with what really happened.Such works might also be described as melodramatic. When they’re tearfully or weakly emotional, they might be described as maudlin, mawkish, sappy, or weepy. Hallmark holiday movies are known for being sentimental.Things that are kept due to being associated with fond memories or loved ones are said to have sentimental value.Example: He’s so sentimental that he keeps all of his childhood toys.