What does sentimentality mean?
Sentimentality names the quality or display of feeling that is tender, nostalgic, and emotionally expressive, often more than the situation seems to require. In ordinary critical use, the word implies excess: a play may be described as sentimental because it encourages the audience to cry, a story as maudlin because its emotional effects are too calculated, or a speaker as sentimental because they appeal to memory and feeling rather than reason. The term can also be used less judgmentally for a broad expression of tenderness, nostalgia, or affection. Its history reflects the English formation of sentimentality from sentiment, itself borrowed from French and ultimately Latin. The word is useful because it names a recognizable rhetorical and emotional pattern: the deliberate or accidental use of feeling to prompt a particular response. It can therefore describe the content of a work, the atmosphere of a performance, or the behavior of a person who responds to experience through an especially sensitive emotional lens.
nounThe quality or expression of being excessively tender, emotional, or nostalgic, especially in a way that is considered overdone or insincere. It can also refer broadly to the display of tender feeling.
- The quality of being excessively tender, emotional, nostalgic, or maudlin.
- A display or expression of tender feeling, especially when regarded as overdone or insincere.
"The film was remembered less for its historical accuracy than for its sentimentalality."
"Her criticism dismissed the novel's emotional moments as cheap sentimentality."
"The old photographs inspired a moment of sentimentality before they were put away."
Rare. The word is normally used as an uncountable noun, but sentimentalities can refer to separate acts or expressions of sentimental feeling.
"The novel is dismissed by some critics as a collection of sentimentalities."
Sentimentality is emotion with the volume turned up—especially when sincerity becomes sentimental overkill.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does sentimentality come from?
Sentimentality was formed in English during the 19th century from sentiment plus the suffix -ality, which creates a noun denoting a quality or state. Sentiment had entered English from French sentiment, derived from Medieval Latin sentire, “to feel.” The related forms sentimental, sentimentalism, and sentimentalize developed from the same English base and inherited its association with tender or emotional expression.
How sentimentality is actually used
The word is commonly neutral to critical and often suggests that emotion is excessive, exaggerated, or rooted in nostalgia. In literary or historical discussion it may be used more neutrally, but it still tends to emphasize tenderness or emotional appeal.
Easily confused with sentimentality
Sentimentality is a noun meaning an excessive or conspicuous display of tender feeling, whereas sentimental is an adjective describing someone or something marked by such feeling.