sentimentalize
Americanverb (used without object)
verb (used with object)
verb
Usage
What does sentimentalize mean? Sentimentalize means to view or portray someone or something in a way that’s sentimental—one that appeals to sensitive or tender emotions, such as love, nostalgia, or pity. Sentimentalize and sentimental 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 sentimentalizing (or oversentimentalizing), as in Stop sentimentalizing everything and looking at things through rose-colored glasses. These kinds of criticisms are especially common in the context of art. For example, a book or film may be criticized as sentimentalizing 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. The words romanticize, idealize, and glamorize are used in similar ways. Example: Stories that sentimentalize the past as a golden age are often drawing on a false nostalgia and wishing to go back to a time that never really existed.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of sentimentalize
First recorded in 1790–1800; sentimental + -ize
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Their latest collaboration does so “one bird at a time,” asking us to join two fine and observant artists in a high calling—not to sentimentalize the world, but to notice it before we lose it.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
Although this second season has its share of "Rogue One" cameos, including the return of Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera, it mostly brushes off the franchise’s tendency to sentimentalize.
From Salon ● Apr. 22, 2025
“Stonewalling” doesn’t sentimentalize or squeeze tears for Lynn, who, for all her meekness, naivete and often-foolish decisions, is tough enough to have long ago waived her right to self-pity.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 31, 2023
But fealty isn’t always a productive strategy, and while the first film greatly tempers the book’s shocks, it doesn’t sentimentalize the source material, as this one does.
From New York Times ● Dec. 15, 2021
She was too much a child of the prairie to morbidly sentimentalize over the matter.
From The Night Riders A Romance of Early Montana by Cullum, Ridgwell
History is sentimentalized, making the sketchy story lines seem even more contrived.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2023
You talked about loss during the pandemic, but it isn't sentimentalized.
From Salon ● Jun. 9, 2023
More problematically, Austen’s plight is sentimentalized by a score leaning heavily on swelling, sound-alike ballads of introspection — overkill, despite the considerable vocal power of the cast.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 22, 2019
The book’s five-by-seven-inch format meant that the pictures were small, and I found the folksy tone of Hughes’s text distracting: it spilled over the photographs and sentimentalized them.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 16, 2019
Not sentimentalized like the magazine covers; not made romantic, as Joseph Pennell has made them; but painted in all their horror.
From Immortal Youth A Study in the Will to Create by Price, Lucien
McGee accentuates Kenneth’s somber shading to a degree that risks sentimentalizing the character.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
Mills, the author of such best-selling books as The Power Elite and White Collar, often overstated his points, and he had a tendency toward sentimentalizing Castro.
From Slate ● May 8, 2019
Without deriding or sentimentalizing the Amish, Castillo illustrates their culture while showing that Amish adherence to traditions and silence on sensitive situations can allow evil to seep in unexpectedly.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 10, 2018
One big help is casting great American actors in all these roles, but it’s also about not sentimentalizing or patronizing the characters — showing them as human beings first, not types.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 9, 2017
Sunday morning—led to some sentimentalizing of our Academy days.
From "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
