sentimentalize love

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To imbue or regard with sentiment; be sentimental about.
  • intransitive verb To behave in a sentimental manner.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To indulge in sentiment; talk sentiment; play the sentimentalist.
  • To render sentimental; give a sentimental character to.
  • Also spelled sentimentalise.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To think or act in a sentimental manner, or like a sentimentalist; to affect exquisite sensibility.
  • transitive verb To regard in a sentimental manner.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive To give a sentimental feel to.
  • verb intransitive To think or act in a sentimental manner, or like a sentimentalist; to affect exquisite sensibility.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb act in a sentimental way or indulge in sentimental thoughts or expression
  • verb make (someone or something) sentimental or imbue with sentimental qualities
  • verb look at with sentimentality or turn into an object of sentiment

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sentimental +‎ -ize

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Examples

  • I'm not sure that I would use the word sentimentalize, myself.

    Six million what Roger Sutton 2007

  • If you, like most Americans, don't know the truth about "your people", you're doomed to perpetuate the crap and sentimentalize the good.

    Great Scots 2009

  • And no woman's life should be sacrificed by those whose religious beliefs subordinate her to men, by those who sentimentalize motherhood as divine will or intuition and by those who do not respect her.

    Rita Nakashima Brock, Ph. D.: Dishonoring Mothers With The Sixth Commandment: We Need Reproductive Rights For Mother's Day Rita Nakashima Brock 2011

  • I think that this strategy in Rabbit is Rich mostly works -- it's still a pretty good book that manages to make Harry Angstrom a more sympathetic figure than he is in either Rabbit, Run or Rabbit Redux but doesn't sentimentalize him in the process.

    Rabbit's Run 2010

  • I think that this strategy in Rabbit is Rich mostly works -- it's still a pretty good book that manages to make Harry Angstrom a more sympathetic figure than he is in either Rabbit, Run or Rabbit Redux but doesn't sentimentalize him in the process.

    February 2010 2010

  • If you, like most Americans, don't know the truth about "your people", you're doomed to perpetuate the crap and sentimentalize the good.

    Archive 2009-08-01 2009

  • I think that this strategy in Rabbit is Rich mostly works -- it's still a pretty good book that manages to make Harry Angstrom a more sympathetic figure than he is in either Rabbit, Run or Rabbit Redux but doesn't sentimentalize him in the process.

    Updike, John 2010

  • Watch the way you sentimentalize a baby bootie and take offense at a pair of boxer shorts.

    4 Reasons Laundry Leads to Happiness (Having Clean Socks Is One of Them) Karen Maezen Miller 2010

  • Schrag notes the rapid changes in Latino families already in the United States, and presents the provocative proposal that they may someday resemble the Irish and the Germans in their ability to set aside, forget, and sentimentalize who they once were.

    Ray Suarez: Red, Brown, and Blue: How our definition of whiteness has changed with each new wave of immigration--and how it needs to change again 2010

  • This temper and its results in a household of young women became a character in Little Women and one of the things Louisa refused to sentimentalize.

    Louisa May Alcott Susan Cheever 2010

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