What's the difference between maudlin and sentimentality?

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.

Sentimentality


Definition:

  • (n.) The quality or state of being sentimental.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Indeed, there was a marked drop in sentiment in Germany , indicating that it is increasingly being affected by the problems elsewhere in the eurozone."
  • (2) Giving voice to that sentiment the mass-selling daily newspaper Ta Nea dedicated its front-page editorial to what it hoped would soon be the group's demise, describing Alexopoulos' desertion as a "positive development".
  • (3) The characteristic mental disturbance includes damage to memory and sentiment, a change in personality, and lowering in spontaneity, but calculation ability and orientation are comparatively preserved.
  • (4) The only Spanish voice heard in Catalonia is that of the Madrid government, which seems oblivious to the implications of the groundswell of pro-independence sentiment, much as at Westminster politicians missed the shift in Scottish opinion until just before the referendum.
  • (5) We still have at our disposal the rational interpretive skills that are the legacy of humanistic education, not as a sentimental piety enjoining us to return to traditional values or the classics but as the active practice of worldly secular rational discourse.
  • (6) One that sentimentality is obsessed by while funds are disproportionately siphoned away from the other 20,933 species facing extinction .
  • (7) The report recommended that governments and international agencies need to counter the anti-vaccination sentiment identified on social media with strong messaging.
  • (8) For some, Aussie still simply means “white”, a sentiment that itself obscures the mostly forgotten English bigotry against the Irish, Australia’s first other.
  • (9) Although Barcelona still needed another, Álvaro Morata’s goal increasing the nerves, and although the Croat’s goal would not prove the winner, the sentiment will be similar in Catalonia now too.
  • (10) Her sentiments echo those of one PKK commander, who says she was not surprised about the sudden breakdown of the peace process.
  • (11) Other controversial voices were Barry Norman, who wondered if Williams’s battles with mental health led him to take on sentimental film projects, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose tweet reading “Genie, you’re free” was seen as glorifying suicide .
  • (12) Eduardo Gorab, a property economist at Capital Economics, said: “Clearly, the uncertainty kicked up by the referendum’s result has had an adverse impact on sentiment, which has been driving outflows over the last week or two.
  • (13) To suggest that people who are concerned about the use of a power of this sort against journalists are condoning terrorism, which seems to be the implication of that remark, is an extremely ugly and unhelpful sentiment.
  • (14) Such sentiments are not uncommon in job agencies, particularly those that specialise in factory and food work, where labour demand is variable and geographically shifting, and conditions often arduous.
  • (15) They must have regard to common moral sentiments, and to what will be morally acceptable in the country as a whole (though they can never hope for total agreement with their conclusions).
  • (16) Its possible marriage to the Sheffield city region is overwhelmingly rooted in perceived economic advantage rather than in history or public sentiment.
  • (17) However, Reinfeldt's majority was undermined by the far right, who have sought to harness anti-immigrant sentiment in a country where one in seven residents is foreign-born.
  • (18) Among groups or organizations, it is unusual for changes in sentiment to precede action or organizational rearrangements.
  • (19) The sentiment is shared by Ed Woodward, the executive vice-chairman, who had not envisaged quite how poorly United would fare.
  • (20) The most important polling question right now is ‘Would you consider voting for Candidate X?’ More than 80% of the GOP electorate would consider voting for Rubio – more than any other candidate.” The rise of outsiders such as Trump, neurosurgeon Ben Carson and businesswoman Carly Fiorina, Luntz added, “is a gut emotional reaction by Republicans to Obama, Clinton and even the Republican Congress.” In a nod to the current “anyone-but-DC” sentiment among primary voters, Rubio has recently made subtle changes to his usual stump speech by casting himself as both an underdog and an outsider.