Literary notes about mawkish (AI summary)
The word “mawkish” is often wielded by writers to deride overly sentimental or cloying expressions, lending a critical tone to emotions perceived as effusive or insincere. In one instance, it appears in a dismissive critique of “each mawkish word of humbugging sentiment” [1], while elsewhere it lends a disquieting hue to a character’s gaze described as shining with a watery, mawkish light [2]. Authors also contrast genuine feeling with affected, theatrical display—using “mawkish” to highlight unwanted softness or feebleness in sentiment, as when tender moments devolve into artifice [3] or when a comedy is branded as insipid and full of mawkish sentimentality [4]. In this way, the term functions as a subtle yet pointed commentary on the boundary between heartfelt emotion and its exaggerated, sometimes farcical, rendition.
- Of course one cannot tell it all down to each mawkish word of humbugging sentiment.
— from The American Senator by Anthony Trollope - It would have been good-natured except for a look in the eyes, which shone with a watery, mawkish light under almost white, blinking eyelashes.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The King is at one moment dissolved in a mawkish tenderness, at another sunk into brutal apathy.
— from The Impeachment of the House of Brunswick by Charles Bradlaugh - Now this Hugh Kelly had just produced a stupid comedy, insipid and full of mawkish sentimentality, and entitled "False Delicacy."
— from Dalziels' Illustrated Goldsmith by Oliver Goldsmith
