mawkish

adjective

mawk·ish ˈmȯ-kish

Synonyms of mawkish next

: lacking flavor or having an unpleasant taste

: exaggeratedly or childishly emotional

a mawkish love story

mawkish poetry

mawkishly adverb

mawkishness noun

Did you know?

The Squirming Origins of Mawkish

Mawkish really opens up a can of worms—or maggots, as it were: the word wriggled out from Middle English mawke, meaning “maggot.” Its earliest sense, used in the late 17th century but now obsolete, was synonymous with squeamish (understandable!) but not long after that mawkish was used to describe an unpleasant, nauseating, often sickeningly sweet flavor. It’s no surprise that a figurative sense of mawkish, used to describe things that are full of “sickly sweet” sentimentality, arose almost concurrently, one of several food texture- and taste-related words favored by critics to show disdain for art they deem overly emotive, including gooey, saccharine, mushy, and schmaltzy.

Examples of mawkish in a Sentence

a mawkish plea for donations to the charity

Recent Examples on the Web But Lawrence’s outfit was less mawkish, and just a little more glamorous than back then. —

Daniel Rodgers, Vogue, 13 Oct. 2023 Russian missile strike kills at least 10 in Lviv, far from front line This week’s hagiographic effort was a mawkish video released by the Kremlin on Tuesday of Putin meeting an 8-year-old Derbent girl summoned to his office. —

Robyn Dixon, Washington Post, 8 July 2023 Ford gets mawkish here; Spencer Tracy keeps it real. —

The New Republic, 22 June 2023 In limited theatrical release November 25 Director Florian Zeller pulled off several miracles with 2020's The Father, an elegant drama about dementia that was never mawkish, and a reminder (for anyone who needed it) that Anthony Hopkins was always more than fava beans and a nice Chianti. —

Leah Greenblatt, EW.com, 23 Nov. 2022 Will the delicate touch that has scored so effectively with viewers and Emmy voters be abandoned for mawkish valedictions? —

John Anderson, WSJ, 14 Mar. 2023 This premise could have been satirical, making The Last of Us a twist on the mawkish network show This Is Us, resulting in fatalistic derision of what historians used to describe as Democracy’s Last Best Hope. —

Armond White, National Review, 1 Mar. 2023 These are not sloppy, mawkish performances, and Bercot blesses their restraint with a pietà that is the year’s visual epiphany. —

Armond White, National Review, 2 Nov. 2022 Goodness is difficult to depict without becoming mawkish, but Mr. Gurnah does it superbly. —

Sam Sacks, WSJ, 26 Aug. 2022 See More

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