What's the difference between melodramatic and sentimental?

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.

Sentimental


Definition:

  • (a.) Having, expressing, or containing a sentiment or sentiments; abounding with moral reflections; containing a moral reflection; didactic.
  • (a.) Inclined to sentiment; having an excess of sentiment or sensibility; indulging the sensibilities for their own sake; artificially or affectedly tender; -- often in a reproachful sense.
  • (a.) Addressed or pleasing to the emotions only, usually to the weaker and the unregulated emotions.

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.