What is another word for mawkish?

Pronunciation: [mˈɔːkɪʃ] (IPA)

Mawkish is an adjective that refers to something that is overly sentimental, sappy, or insipid. It can also describe something that is tacky or tasteless. Synonyms for mawkish include cloying, saccharine, sugary, maudlin, sentimental, mushy, corny, cheesy, trite, and hackneyed. Some other words that could be used as synonyms for mawkish are schmaltzy, banal, overwrought, melodramatic, syrupy, and treacly. When you want to express dislike for something that is overly sentimental or cheesy, using a synonym for mawkish is a great way to get your point across.

Synonyms for Mawkish:

What are the hypernyms for Mawkish?

A hypernym is a word with a broad meaning that encompasses more specific words called hyponyms.

What are the opposite words for mawkish?

The word "mawkish" typically refers to something that is excessively sentimental or emotionally overdone. Some suitable antonyms for this word include rational, logical, straightforward, realistic, level-headed, pragmatic, sensible, and practical. These antonyms point to a more balanced and restrained approach, signaling a lack of excess or overt emotionality. They suggest a more grounded and practical attitude, one that is less prone to extreme or extravagant displays of sentimentality. By highlighting a more pragmatic or sensible outlook, these antonyms present a more mature perspective, one that is more focused on achieving results or solving problems than indulging in sentimentality.

What are the antonyms for Mawkish?

Usage examples for Mawkish

mawkish sentimentality had no place in her character.
"From the Housetops"
George Barr McCutcheon
Are you going to sit there and tell me that for some obstinate, mawkish reason you think you ought to deprive her of the one man in all this world that she wants and must have?
"From the Housetops"
George Barr McCutcheon
The saccharine romance-monger, Elise Polko, has a rather mawkish story which she connects with his name, though on what authority, I am ignorant.
"The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1"
Rupert Hughes

Famous quotes with Mawkish

  • Presents don't really mean much to me. I don't want to sound mawkish, but - it was the realization that I have a great many people in my life who really love me, and who I really love.
    Gabriel Byrne
  • How ironic the difference between me and my young son Absalom, between his soliciting the soundest means of overtaking me and having my life, while I was cudgeling my brains for a way to spare his. "Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom," were my mawkish words to my commanders as their men trooped past me toward the positions they would take up in the field outside the wood of Ephraim for the battle in which he would die. "Beware that none touch the young man Absalom," I urged like a fool. No, not like a fool, but like a fond, doting father who will overlook and excuse everything in the child he loves best, and who breaks his heart. And in that singular disparity in our desires abides his lasting victory over me: I loved him and he did not love me.
    Joseph Heller
  • Richard Chase declares, "No great poet has written so much bad verse as Emily Dickinson." He blames the Victorian cult of little women for the fact that "two thirds of her work" is seriously flawed: "Her coy and oddly childish poems of nature and female friendship are products of a time when one of the careers open to women was perpetual childhood." Dickinson's sentimental feminine poems remain neglected by embarrassed scholars. I would maintain, however, that her poetry is a closed system of sexual reference and that the mawkish poems are designed to dovetail with those of violence and suffering.
    Emily Dickinson
  • It is a curious thing, after years have elapsed, to go back upon the pages of a favourite author. Nothing shows us more forcibly the change that has taken place in ourselves. The book is a mental mirror — the mind starts from its own face, so much freshness, and so much fire has passed away. The colours and the light of youth have gone together. The judgment of the man rarely confirms that of the boy. What was once sweet has become mawkish, and the once exquisite simile appears little more than an ingenious conceit. The sentiment which the heart once beat to applaud has now no answering key-note within, and the real is perpetually militating against the imagined. It is a great triumph to the poet when we return to the volume, and find that our early creed was, after all, the true religion.
    Letitia Elizabeth Landon

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