mawkishness
Noun: 1. Excessively sentimental or emotional quality: The state or quality of being overly sentimental in a way that seems insincere, exaggerated, or cloying. 2. Insincere or sickly-sweet pathos: A display of shallow, false, or maudlin emotion, often intended to elicit sympathy but instead causing discomfort or distaste.
General Usage: * The novel's ending was criticized for its mawkishness, as the sudden outpouring of emotion felt unearned and manipulative. * He avoided greeting cards, finding their mawkishness unbearable. * The film's mawkishness overshadowed its genuine moments of heartfelt drama.
In Critique: * The reviewer noted the song's mawkishness, describing its lyrics as cloying and insincere. * Her speech crossed the line from sincere tribute into sheer mawkishness.
- Mawkishness often implies a lack of authenticity. It describes sentimentality that feels forced, calculated, or excessively sweet, like something that is "sickly-sweet" in an emotional sense.
- It is frequently used in literary, film, and artistic criticism to denote a failure of emotional effect, where the attempt to move the audience results instead in a sense of artificiality or even revulsion.
- Mawkish (adjective): Having the quality of mawkishness; sentimentally excessive in a weak or insipid way.
- Example: The mawkish dialogue made the movie difficult to watch.
- Mawkishly (adverb): In a mawkish manner.
- Example: The poem was mawkishly sentimental.
- Sentimentality
- Maudlinness
- Mushiness
- Schmalz (or schmaltz)
- Corniness
- Sappiness
- Unsentimentality
- Stoicism
- Austerity
- Hardheadedness
- To drip with mawkishness: To be overwhelmingly and unpleasantly sentimental.
- Example: The finale dripped with mawkishness, featuring a predictable reunion set to swelling strings.
- To descend into mawkishness: For a piece of writing or speech to lose its genuine emotional tone and become overly sentimental.
- Example: The eulogy was touching at first but quickly descended into mawkishness.
-
falsely emotional in a maudlin way
-
insincere pathos
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