What's the difference between maudlin and melodramatic?

Maudlin


Definition:

  • (a.) Tearful; easily moved to tears; exciting to tears; excessively sentimental; weak and silly.
  • (a.) Drunk, or somewhat drunk; fuddled; given to drunkenness.
  • (n.) Alt. of Maudeline

Example Sentences:

  • (1) No, he says, he didn't get intimations of mortality, he didn't get maudlin, he didn't think about how he'd never work again.
  • (2) A key scene sees a puppet Kim Jong-il sing a maudlin number by that name.
  • (3) The first day (there is more in front of the Senate Thursday) was like an endless wake, which led to rambling meditation, many maudlin congratulations, thanks and eulogies from representatives who will, at most, regret losing the chance to whack their favorite economic piñata.
  • (4) Why am I suddenly maudlin about old photographs of tiny children in school uniform and haunted by memories of nursery teas and long afternoons in the park watching small boys chase a ball?
  • (5) The endless mawkish comparisons, wailing headlines and maudlin snippets.
  • (6) But his ability to abruptly switch tack and tone, into poetry or maudlin song, makes him a fascinating performer.
  • (7) But you listen to the music and it has this maudlin depression and beauty at the same time."
  • (8) Gilbert is against a kind of maudlin attachment to grief, which doesn't progress.
  • (9) I trust the confessional quality will be instructive and not taken as maudlin or pseudo-Proustian.
  • (10) But being focused on making plans, such as arranging my own funeral, has stopped me from becoming maudlin.
  • (11) After the shooting, the boys’ respective journals were found and while Dylan’s was full of maudlin and often nonsensical dreams about killing himself, Harris’s was full of violent and sadistic fantasies about hurting others.
  • (12) She is far from maudlin, having expressed a wish to be cremated in a vodka-bottle shaped coffin before having her ashes scattered on the island of Lindisfarne, off the north-east coast.

Melodramatic


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to melodrama; like or suitable to a melodrama; unnatural in situation or action.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ron Atkinson described one trip to Anfield as like going into the Vietnam War and, if that sounds melodramatic all these years on, his team had just been attacked with tear gas.
  • (2) In 1850 you could see Benjamin West’s ever popular vision of the apocalypse, Death on a Pale Horse , riding melodramatically back into view on Broadway for the fourth time in as many years; and a gallery of Rembrandts at Niblo’s theatre, where Charles Blondin once walked a tightrope.
  • (3) Old Trafford was once a Theatre of Dreams but now setting for a tragedy , melodramatics Russell Brand.
  • (4) The satirists were completely disregarded as news producers continued to make ever more melodramatic, repetitive and graphically absurd programmes.
  • (5) Adaptations Don Juan and The Corsair were both filmed in melodramatic black and white; the Byronic hero spawned a thousand celluloid imitations - Gabriel Byrne is convincingly Byronic as Byron in Ken Russell's hallucinogenic and slightly laughable Gothic (1986).
  • (6) A suspicion lingers among some that gothic answers only to the teenager's melodramatic instincts ( TS Eliot diagnosed a taste for Edgar Allan Poe as fatally adolescent), its terrors as ultimately unserious as saying "Boo!".
  • (7) I was making lyrics that would rhyme or flow or capture a mood, and looking back I think: ‘Why was I doing that?’ I don’t have a particularly melodramatic or exceptional life but at least I can sing about the things that are happening in my life and it feels so much better and more honest and more meaningful.” While hardly startling territory for a singer-songwriter, the juxtaposition of Dan’s wavering delivery with stirring dance rhythms functions as a kind of emotional double whammy.
  • (8) [The film] aches for more depth and warmth and humour, but this is spectacular sci-fi – huge, operatic, melodramatic, impressive.
  • (9) Without being melodramatic about it, I say, you are holding in your hands an example of the price that is paid for being a professional footballer at the top of his game.
  • (10) Lord Home who has died at the age of 92, was in manner unobtrusive and undemanding yet reached the height of his political career, first as foreign secretary and next as prime minister, in melodramatic circumstances.
  • (11) And then along came a Greek deal, and now a US debt deal, and you might presume I had been prematurely melodramatic.
  • (12) But the prosecution described his testimony as “Oscar-worthy” and said it amounted to a “melodramatic denial” of his sexual proclivities.
  • (13) The proximity of one of the Kremlin towers to the spot where Nemtsov was shot in the back is darkly melodramatic, and the symbolism could not be clearer.
  • (14) "In some senses they have reacted in a slightly melodramatic manner.
  • (15) That melodramatic, all-over-the-shop approach to vocal melody just screamed “hippy” at me, and seemed to be the aural equivalent of shawls, beads, headdresses and candles, all of which I suspected Kate Bush was wearing or surrounded by while she recorded the vocal.
  • (16) Trierweiler is forever dashing into bathrooms and collapsing while Hollande is an unfeeling prig who either ignores her or tells her to stop being so melodramatic.
  • (17) Rosa portrays himself melodramatically, and with a gnomic tablet saying that silence is the best policy.
  • (18) While he recognises that this may sound melodramatic, he points out that this is precisely what has happened with previous decisions to tighten eligibility for other disability benefits.
  • (19) "Sometimes the smallest little detail can change the course of history," he says, melodramatically.
  • (20) He was the first foreign secretary for 20 years to be a member of the House of Lords he was the first (and surely last) man ever to disclaim six peerages to become prime minister and he was responsible for arranging that his successor should be chosen by secret ballot held among Conservative members of the House of Commons, with equally melodramatic consequences.