as in sentimentality
the state or quality of having an excess of tender feelings (as of love, nostalgia, or compassion)
the novel's sentimentalism bored me
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Recent Examples of sentimentalism
While leaders of the nature-study movement warned against sentimentalism and make-believe, young readers were delighted by such tales.
—
Jessica George, JSTOR Daily, 25 June 2025
King’s honeyed voiceover begins the film with a kind of sentimentalism about childhood and its innocence.
—Lisa Kennedy, Variety, 4 July 2024
The next few songs strand us on a mountaintop of sentimentalism, while subtly rebuking race and genre lines.
—Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 1 Apr. 2024
In its commitment to a particular kind of sentimentalism, No Hard Feelings doesn’t fully lean into the raunchiness some might expect from its trailer or early buzz.
—Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 June 2023
See All Example Sentences for sentimentalism
Jessica George, JSTOR Daily, 25 June 2025
King’s honeyed voiceover begins the film with a kind of sentimentalism about childhood and its innocence.
—Lisa Kennedy, Variety, 4 July 2024
The next few songs strand us on a mountaintop of sentimentalism, while subtly rebuking race and genre lines.
—Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 1 Apr. 2024
In its commitment to a particular kind of sentimentalism, No Hard Feelings doesn’t fully lean into the raunchiness some might expect from its trailer or early buzz.
—Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 June 2023
See All Example Sentences for sentimentalism
Recent Examples of Synonyms for sentimentalism
sentimentality
Noun
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Raven is ever attentive to the imaging of the West as a kind of battleground, where surveillance (and the camera’s inexorable links to the military apparatus) tussles with sentimentality in a centuries-long project from which the national psyche cannot seem to unlatch.—
Anne Reeve,
Artforum,
1 Oct. 2025
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Walsh and Sherman both recognized Lupino’s superior intellect and resistance to unearned sentimentality.—
Jim Hemphill,
IndieWire,
25 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Sentimentalism.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sentimentalism. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.
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