How to Use mawkish in a Sentence

mawkish

adjective

• This may sound mawkish—but how much of our inner life is first learned through music?
  — The New Yorker, 6 Dec. 2021
• What might seem mawkish on paper ends up deeply affecting in practice.
  — Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 28 Dec. 2023
• But Lawrence’s outfit was less mawkish, and just a little more glamorous than back then.
  — Daniel Rodgers, Vogue, 13 Oct. 2023
• In most hands, this business of the mother-figure who sacrifices all for a child would be mawkish.
  — Rumaan Alam, The New Republic, 12 Apr. 2021
• But this was a very strange debut, merging grim toughness with mawkish softening twists.
  — Darren Franich, EW.com, 12 Nov. 2019
• Walk On,’ a salve about hope and redemption that seemed trite and mawkish several months ago.
  — Max Londberg and Timothy Finn, kansascity.com, 12 June 2017
• Lots of so-so joshery about college life, a big mawkish moment and a redemptive theme make this strictly mall fodder.
  — Chronicle Staff Report, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 Oct. 2017
• Its direction is stodgy and unimpressive, and its screenplay stilted and mawkish.
  — Alison Foreman, IndieWire, 3 July 2026
• Now, after the two men canoodle, there’s a mawkish finale meant to invoke purpose and principle.
  — Armond White, National Review, 26 July 2024
• Like a very, very mawkish improv set, the episode struggles to insert all this information while moving the plot forward.
  — Rebecca Farley, refinery29.com, 5 June 2018
• 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
• And so much of what concerned me as important in the earlier pages of my diary now seems mawkish, trivial or beneath notice.
  — Paul Theroux, New York Times, 30 Mar. 2020
• The Oscar shorts are made entirely out of scenes like these, but there is no context — just hours and hours of garish twists and mawkish sentiment.
  — Nate Jones, Vulture, 9 Mar. 2024
• The title character seems at odds with his own story—his behavior resists the mawkish sheen of Trevorrow's style.
  — Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader, 22 June 2017
• Ed refused to spoon Bob, and his gentle and emancipated soul would surely rebuff mawkish kindness.
  — Daniel Felsenthal, The New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2024
• Professional critics found such works mawkish, and heavy-metal purists dissed Linkin Park in crasser terms—gay or, yes, girly.
  — Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 25 June 2018
• Bill Nighy adds a light comic touch, and is a welcome foil for some of Their Finest’s occasional mawkish moments.
  — Thomas Barrie, A-LIST, 6 Apr. 2017
• Gilchrist, who isn’t on the spectrum, is persuasive and thoughtful enough to avoid making Sam feel like a stereotype, even in more mawkish or predictable moments.
  — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 13 Aug. 2017
• These kinds of pictures are intended to provoke—to catch the eye with their mawkish absurdity and uncanny-valley optics.
  — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 5 Apr. 2025
• Even its final bars of Gregorian chanting, one of many bells and whistles stuffed between the mawkish choruses, can’t lift this track out of the morass.
  — Linnie Greene, Pitchfork, 29 Apr. 2026
• Kara’s scenes are full of swelling strings and mawkish sentimentality that seem to be begging you to Feel Something Now.
  — Kyle Orland, Ars Technica, 24 May 2018
• And the inevitable reaffirmation of the family’s bonds, strengthened by the spirit of the girls’ mother, is touching without being too mawkish.
  — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 18 Aug. 2022
• The sounds are chintzy and soaked in reverb, like a mawkish ’80s ballad rewritten from memory, and the whole thing slowly falls apart and fades out like an old track by the Field.
  — Andrew Ryce, Pitchfork, 24 June 2026
• 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
• Even when the season slows down a bit, Sudeikis’ vulnerability is touching, without ever being mawkish.
  — oregonlive, 20 July 2021
• The book’s final section, comprising a reunion at a funeral, could have been mawkish but instead is moving … A riveting tale.
  — Literary Hub, 20 Feb. 2026
• Despite the grievous subject matter, there is not a single note in Vega’s catalogue that could be heard as mawkish or emotionally overwrought.
  — Emma Madden, Vulture, 9 May 2025
• Beyond all the legal and even medical specifics resides a sense of communal understanding, and — at the risk of sounding mawkish — a deep and abiding love for one’s fellow human beings, which Feder taps into with aplomb.
  — Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 28 Jan. 2025
• A great deal of Confederate iconography was not commissioned in remembrance of soldierly valor or mawkish depiction of genteel Dixie.
  — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 19 Aug. 2017
• The flashbacks are dreamy without becoming mawkish, and Gemma’s scenes in Lumon are nightmarish without feeling untethered or otherwordly.
  — Ben Travers, IndieWire, 28 Feb. 2025