sentimental

/,senti'mentl/

Thân thiện

She keeps a sentimental locket with a picture of her grandmother inside.

Definition

1. Adjective:
   • Excessively emotional or nostalgic: Characterized by or showing an excessive, often superficial, focus on tender feelings, nostalgia, or romanticized emotion.
   • Based on or appealing to emotion rather than reason: Arising from or influenced by feeling, especially tender or nostalgic feeling, rather than logical thought.

Examples of Usage

• Adjective:
  • She kept the old ticket stubs for sentimental reasons. (She kept them because they evoked personal memories, not for practical value.)
  • The movie was too sentimental for my taste, with its predictable, tear-jerking scenes.
  • He gets sentimental whenever he talks about his childhood home.

Advanced Usage

• "Sentimental value": The worth of an object derived from personal or emotional associations rather than its monetary value.

  • This old watch has great sentimental value to me because it was my grandfather's.

• "Sentimental journey": A trip taken to revisit places associated with happy memories from one's past.

  • They took a sentimental journey back to the town where they first met.

Variants and Related Words

• Sentimentality (n): The quality of being sentimental, especially in an excessive or mawkish way.

  • The novel's sentimentality appealed to a wide audience.

• Sentimentally (adv): In a sentimental manner.

  • He spoke sentimentally about his old friends.

Synonyms

• Maudlin: Tearfully or weakly emotional; foolishly sentimental.
• Mushy: Excessively sentimental.
• Nostalgic: Characterized by a sentimental longing for the past.

Antonyms

• Unsentimental: Not influenced by or showing sentiment; practical and realistic.
• Hardheaded: Practical and realistic; not sentimental.

Related Idioms

• Wear one's heart on one's sleeve: To openly show one's feelings or sentiments.
  • He always wears his heart on his sleeve, which makes him seem quite sentimental.

Học thuật

Adjective

1. effusively or insincerely emotional
   • a bathetic novel
   • maudlin expressions of sympathy
   • mushy effusiveness
   • a schmaltzy song
   • sentimental soap operas
   • slushy poetry
2. given to or marked by sentiment or sentimentality