SENTIMENTAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sentimental mean? 

• SENTIMENTAL (adjective)
  The adjective SENTIMENTAL has 2 senses:

1. given to or marked by sentiment or sentimentality

2. effusively or insincerely emotional

  Familiarity information: SENTIMENTAL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SENTIMENTAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Given to or marked by sentiment or sentimentality

Similar:

tender (given to sympathy or gentleness or sentimentality)

Derivation:

sentiment (tender, romantic, or nostalgic feeling or emotion)

sentimentality (extravagant or affected feeling or emotion)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Effusively or insincerely emotional

Synonyms:

bathetic; drippy; hokey; kitschy; maudlin; mawkish; mushy; sappy; schmaltzy; schmalzy; sentimental; slushy; soppy; soupy

Context example:

slushy poetry

Similar:

emotional (of more than usual emotion)

Derivation:

sentiment (tender, romantic, or nostalgic feeling or emotion)

sentimentality (falsely emotional in a maudlin way)

 Context examples 

He likes to write, and he'll give a tone to our contributions and keep us from being sentimental, don't you see?

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

They make us aware of the passage of time and make us sentimental or nostalgic.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

Remember, I am enunciating biology and not sentimental ethics.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

“I'll come anywhere you like,” said Steerforth, “or do anything you like. Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I'll produce myself in any state you please, sentimental or comical.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The idea of Louisa Musgrove turned into a person of literary taste, and sentimental reflection was amusing, but she had no doubt of its being so.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

That is the reward, and I have reason to know that there are sentimental considerations in the background which would induce the Countess to part with half her fortune if she could but recover the gem.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They were always engaged in some sentimental discussion or lively dispute, but their sentiment was conveyed in such whispering voices, and their vivacity attended with so much laughter, that though Catherine's supporting opinion was not unfrequently called for by one or the other, she was never able to give any, from not having heard a word of the subject.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

In which case Lord Godalming, though so dear a friend, would have had no claim in the world; and the inheritors, being remote, would not be likely to abandon their just rights, for sentimental reasons regarding an entire stranger.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Blanche Ingram, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

"What do you know about his eyes and his manners? You never spoke to him, hardly," cried Jo, who was not sentimental.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)