Crossword clues for sentimentality
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sentimentality \Sen`ti*men*tal"i*ty\, n. [CF. F. sentimentalit['e].] The quality or state of being sentimental.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1768, from sentimental + -ity.
Wiktionary
n. An act of being sentimental.
WordNet
n. falsely emotional in a maudlin way [syn: mawkishness, drippiness]
extravagant or affected feeling or emotion
Wikipedia
Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason.
Sentimentalism in philosophy is a view in meta-ethics according to which morality is somehow grounded in moral sentiments or emotions. Sentimentalism in literature is both a device used to induce a tender emotional response disproportionate to the situation at hand, (and thus to substitute heightened and generally uncritical feeling for normal ethical and intellectual judgments), and a heightened reader response willing to invest previously prepared emotions to respond disproportionately to a literary situation.
"A sentimentalist", Oscar Wilde wrote, "is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it." In James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus sends Buck Mulligan a telegraph that reads "The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done." James Baldwin considered that 'Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel...the mask of cruelty'. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, contrasts sentimentalists and romantics with Amory Blaine telling Rosalind, “I'm not sentimental--I'm as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last--the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won't.”
Usage examples of "sentimentality".
There was affectation and sentimentality about his work, a prettiness of face, rosy flesh tints, and a general lightness of color, but he was a superior brushman, a good colorist, and, at times, a man of earnestness and power.
The universe gets so ga-ga about weddings that I expected sentimentality to sneak up on me and make me a mushy mess.
When the thing is maintained, not as a mere windy sentimentality, but with some notion of carrying it logically, the result is invariably a display of paralogy so absurd that it becomes pathetic.
Cornyness goes down particularly well, cutesy talk and schmaltzy sentimentality rate highly too.
It served the goals of the German Empire without either sentimentality or needless brutality, and given the inevitability of colonialism, the Pacific islanders in the German empire were fortunate to have Hahl and Solf standing between them and the settlers.
As a result of a sedulous study of historical sentimentalities, traditions, dialects and local feelings, a whole cluster of new sovereign Powers, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, an attenuated Hungary and an enlarged Roumania, was evoked to crowd and complicate the affairs of mankind by their sovereign liberties, their ambitions, hostilities, alliances, understandings, misunderstandings, open and secret treaties, tariffs, trade wars and the like.
As a matter of fact, there have been intermittent rebellions against the prevailing pecksniffery and sentimentality ever since the days of Irving and Hawthorne.
And once a bottle of Cte Rtie or Scharlachberger is in her, even the least emotional woman shows the same complex of sentimentalities that a man shows, and is as maudlin and idiotic as he is.
But the hierarchy of feeding in a pride of lions allowed no sentimentality.
All of these reek of sentimentality, and yet -- not these particular poems, perhaps, but poems of this kind, are capable of giving true pleasure to people who can see clearly what is wrong with them.
To convince ourselves of this, we do not need to recall the effect of Werther, of Childe Harold, and of Don Juan, and the imitation of their sentimentality, misanthropy, and adventure, down to the copying of the rakishness of the loosely-knotted necktie and the broad turn-over collar.
The hollowness and vanity of the fellow, his petty meanness and stupidity, his puling sentimentality and credulity, his bombastic air of a cock on a dunghill, his anaesthesia to all whispers and summonings of the spirit, above all, his loathsome clumsiness in amour--all these things must revolt any woman above the lowest.
Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, hereby resign my cadetship for reasons of overwhelming stupidity and weak sentimentality.
This is not one of those embalmed adorations of nostalgic sentimentality.
Ellie agreed with Ted's appraisal of Marjorie Melody's syndicated column--nauseating was too mild a word for the mixture of unctuous prayers, sloppy sentimentality, and back-to-the-kitchen antifeminism--but his last speech, delivered with a vicious10O Elizabeth Peters ness quite unlike his usual expressions of petty resentment, made her protest.