How to Use maudlin in a Sentence

maudlin

adjective
  • He became maudlin and started crying like a child.
  • Toward the end, though, the doc takes on a maudlin air.
    John Defore, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 May 2017
  • The chorus is huge, but the best part is the maudlin bridge, which just begs to be dragged out.
    Andrew R. Chow, Time, 26 Sep. 2019
  • The need to compress history leads to moments that are maudlin or heavy-handed.
    Mike Hale, New York Times, 12 Jan. 2018
  • But the first round of donations were largely maudlin and uncreative.
    Heather Hansman, Outside Online, 12 Feb. 2021
  • But the current-day trip to Japan, which makes up the bulk of the novel, is marked by more pat and maudlin plot twists.
    John Williams, New York Times, 30 Nov. 2016
  • Yet watching the symbols of an epoch implode makes me wistful, almost maudlin.
    Ana Veciana-Suarez, miamiherald, 26 Mar. 2018
  • King was worried that the orchestral score underneath was too maudlin.
    Rachel Syme, The New Yorker, 19 June 2023
  • Compare the maudlin strings of Mad Men’s theme music with the bouncing tubas of Curb’s.
    Adam Wilson, Harper's magazine, 16 Sep. 2019
  • Not even the mighty Adele can rescue the maudlin overdrive of this 25 ballad.
    Chuck Arnold, Billboard, 4 May 2018
  • The cast's quick wit keeps scenes from falling into maudlin territory.
    Steve Heisler, Chicago Reader, 11 Apr. 2018
  • Most of its productions are soap operas with gaudy costumes and maudlin dialogue.
    Jonathan Kaiman, latimes.com, 9 Apr. 2018
  • The more maudlin this story gets, the harder del Toro presses PC buttons.
    Armond White, National Review, 15 Dec. 2017
  • We are also treated to several rather maudlin scenes of the father teaching his son about the fairies prior to his disappearance.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 13 June 2020
  • The subject matter is grim, but the tone is motley and irreverent, veering from maudlin realism to campy notes on the camps.
    The New Yorker, 29 Nov. 2022
  • While there were moments during the evening that might have brought a tear to one’s eye, the tribute was neither maudlin or celebratory.
    Karen Bliss, Billboard, 8 Nov. 2017
  • Israelite gives the images some grit and visual interest but the story just spends too much time on the maudlin coming-of-age and teambuilding.
    Lindsey Bahr, Orange County Register, 23 Mar. 2017
  • Death, the only long-term certainty for any of us, permeates these episodes, although not in an overly maudlin way.
    Judy Berman, Time, 28 Feb. 2022
  • My first thought is of certain and immediate death, followed by a maudlin song orchestrating a montage of good moments.
    New York Times, 20 Apr. 2018
  • Pitfalls of maudlin cliché surround the subject, but Mr. Roberts has skirted them, above all through his bold choice of music.
    Brian Seibert, New York Times, 11 Dec. 2019
  • The profiles humanize the topic, without resorting to the maudlin or sensational.
    USA TODAY, 7 Mar. 2018
  • Even so, there's nothing maudlin or nostalgic about this reflective, measured goodbye from one of the genre's greats.
    Billboard Staff, Billboard, 19 Nov. 2019
  • But even his most maudlin lyrics seemed to connect viscerally with his audience, most of whom were women of all ages but also with some of the men those women arrived with.
    Timothy Finn, kansascity.com, 30 June 2017
  • There’s nothing soft, nothing maudlin, nothing cheap about real kindness.
    Claire Comstock-Gay, The Cut, 12 June 2017
  • Don't let anyone trap you into a maudlin discussion or an emotional confrontation.
    Magi Helena, oregonlive, 4 Jan. 2020
  • And the data is coming in from several sources, giving cable news channels a maudlin kind of scoreboard as two numbers – cases and deaths – seem to change almost by the hour.
    Michael Tackett, USA TODAY, 25 May 2020
  • Readers may have been surprised to see Tomine turn toward such a maudlin vision of representation, after avoiding it for so long.
    Hua Hsu, The New Yorker, 20 Feb. 2023
  • Tumarkin takes up subjects like youth suicide and the plight of homeless people in North Melbourne, but her approach is never maudlin.
    Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 2 Dec. 2019
  • Thone, as the grieving mother, refuses to be maudlin — if the killer’s blood is ice water under a crust of blood, hers is simmering lava under a crust of ice.
    Brendan Kiley, The Seattle Times, 5 May 2017
  • His version begins in the usual maudlin mode: Interweaving horn lines arranged by Isaac Hayes set the scene as if drawing a stage curtain.
    Emily Lordi, The Atlantic, 10 Dec. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'maudlin.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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