Definitions

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

  • adjective Having, showing, or caused by emotion, especially tender or affectionate feeling.
  • adjective Having, showing, or caused by strong or extravagant tenderness or sadness, often in an idealized way.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to sentimentalism.
  • Swayed, or apt to be swayed, by sentiment; of a tender and susceptible heart; mawkishly tender or susceptible: as, a sentimental person.
  • Containing or characterized by sentiment; appealing to the feelings rather than to reason: as, a sentimental song; sentimental works.
  • Synonyms Romantic, Sentimental (see romantic), hysterical, gushing, etc. (in style).

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

  • adjective obsolescent Having, expressing, or containing a sentiment or sentiments; abounding with moral reflections; containing a moral reflection; didactic.
  • adjective Inclined to sentiment; having an excess of sentiment or sensibility; indulging the sensibilities for their own sake; artificially or affectedly tender; -- often in a reproachful sense.
  • adjective Addressed or pleasing to the emotions only, usually to the weaker and the unregulated emotions.

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

  • adjective characterized by sentiment, sentimentality or excess emotion
  • adjective derived from emotion rather than reason
  • adjective romantic

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

  • adjective given to or marked by sentiment or sentimentality
  • adjective effusively or insincerely emotional

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Whereas the term "sentimental" can be used more often than not to hint at an indulgence in the emotionality it can imply, when speaking of a movie it might refer to the film being used to pull on the heartstrings and provoke the tear ducts of the audience in a contrived and calculated manner.

    Carol Smaldino: A Surprise of Sentiment and 50-50 Carol Smaldino 2011

  • Whereas the term "sentimental" can be used more often than not to hint at an indulgence in the emotionality it can imply, when speaking of a movie it might refer to the film being used to pull on the heartstrings and provoke the tear ducts of the audience in a contrived and calculated manner.

    Carol Smaldino: A Surprise of Sentiment and 50-50 Carol Smaldino 2011

  • Whereas the term "sentimental" can be used more often than not to hint at an indulgence in the emotionality it can imply, when speaking of a movie it might refer to the film being used to pull on the heartstrings and provoke the tear ducts of the audience in a contrived and calculated manner.

    Carol Smaldino: A Surprise of Sentiment and 50-50 Carol Smaldino 2011

  • I went back to the Philippines with MacArthur on his final journey there in 1961, what he called his sentimental journey.

    In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines 1989

  • He would have liked to have left them behind altogether, and even tried to laugh Beth out of what he called her sentimental attachment to odds and ends; but as most of the things had belonged to Aunt Victoria, she took his ridicule so ill that he wisely let the subject drop.

    The Beth Book Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius Sarah Grand

  • General Botha and General Smuts were ready to concede almost every material point, provided what they called the sentimental objection against race distinction was waived by the Indian community.

    74. ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA 1925

  • “But isn't that what you call sentimental?” said Vincent.

    Father Payne Benson, Arthur C. 1915

  • You say 'the sentimental is always a got-up thing,' a 'do at the bottom of it.'

    Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle 1892

  • We have already established in these (blog) pages that I don't think "sentimental" is a dirty word -- as long as the emotion is honestly earned, that I adore a good cry -- as long as I don't feel jerked around, and that I consider "old fashioned" a term of art, not an insult.

    Fanny deliasherman 2010

  • We have already established in these (blog) pages that I don't think "sentimental" is a dirty word -- as long as the emotion is honestly earned, that I adore a good cry -- as long as I don't feel jerked around, and that I consider "old fashioned" a term of art, not an insult.

    Fanny deliasherman 2010

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