Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Excessively and objectionably sentimental. See Synonyms at sentimental.
- adj. Sickening or insipid in taste.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Maggoty. [Not found in this literal sense. Compare mawky, 1.] Hence Loathsome; apt to cause loathing or nausea; sickening.
- Insipid; sickening; sickly: as, mawkish champagne; mawkish sentimentality.
Wiktionary
- adj. Feeling sick, queasy.
- adj. Sickening or insipid in taste or smell.
- adj. Excessively or falsely sentimental; showing a sickly excess of sentiment.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Apt to cause satiety or loathing; nauseous; slightly nauseating; disgusting.
- adj. Easily disgusted; squeamish; sentimentally fastidious.
- adj. Weakly sentimental; maudlin.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. effusively or insincerely emotional
Etymologies
- From Middle English mawke, maggot, variant of magot; see maggot.
Examples
“This book, small and easily digested, stopping just short of the maudlin and the mawkish, is on the whole sincere, sentimental, and skillful.”
Tuesdays With Morrie: Summary and book reviews of Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom.
“I hope that that song doesn't sound too much like that kind of mawkish Christian rock song.”
“Professor, "mawkish" doesn't even begin to describe it.”
“Mr. BROWN: It's a very emotional (unintelligible) and not in a kind of mawkish way either.”
“You have written about this so affectionately and without a hint of the mawkish which is a difficult balance, I find.”
“There's another trope that pops up with some frequency to do the same work, only instead of focusing on the trauma experienced by individual soldiers, it peddles a kind of mawkish brotherhood-between-soldiers as the greater moral good in war.”
“Even its detractors, one of whom called the book "mawkish" and poorly written, conceded the book has had an enormous influence, and it did so by virtue of its sincerity.”
“However, Lost in Showbiz admits to being puzzled by the slightly chippy, AA Gill-ish tone of the US cable, which described American shows broadcast in Saudi Arabia as "mawkish".”
“I don't think I've ever used the word "mawkish," but it came to mind more than once while I was listening to this crap.”
“We have come to hold, in a kind of mawkish stupor, that greatness is to be gauged by self-sacrifice.”
The Fountainhead
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘mawkish’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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my fab list
blowsabella, aperçu, froideur, salubrious, abject, gallipot, mumchance, wainscot, virago, macerate, lascivious, clandestine and 181 more...
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Favorite Words
Fun words that are interesting and arresting.
Ort, unctuous, panoply, defenestrate, palpable, ubiquitous, flagellate, serendipitous, epiphanic, constructivist, amuse bouche, sobriquet and 30 more...
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mots justes
No true synonyms, no other word will do.
dysphemism, nyehre, conflate, onomatopœic, galumph, zeitgeist, mercenary, theomeny, git, snarky, sass, smarmy and 43 more...
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Slam Fodder
Those words that will inevitable end up in a Slam Poem
feel free to challenge me!:)bumptious, gamekeeper, slamily, burbuliatorius, cryptomnesia, paradox, pulchritudinous, mimetic, anhedonia, skelf, rampike, furlough and 84 more...
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Oooh, good word!
cloyless, laconic, pontificate, mawkish, pedantic, hubris, inchoate
PossibleUnderscore See maudlin. Jul 17, 2009
yarb Poetical mawkish duff gen/where a buzzard is 'noble' and lands/in a tree (surprise, surprise!)/to corroborate some trite tenet/cum badly-observed Nature Note.
- Peter Reading, C, 1984 Jul 23, 2008