Word of the Day Archive
Friday May 12, 2000
mawkish \MOCK-ish\ , adjective:
1. Sickly or excessively sentimental.
2. Insipid in taste; nauseous; disgusting.
The movie's attempts to connect these out-of-body experiences with the'60s ethos of consciousness expansion are so forced that the transcendent, feel-good leaps of faith with which the story culminates seem mawkish and unearned.
-- Stephen Holden, "Eden': Out of Step at a Prep School as a New Age Dawns.", New York Times, April 3, 1998
Philadelphia Inquirer dismissed it as "a terrible play, a hopeless jumble of juvenile humor and mawkish sentimentality."
-- Peter Applebome, "Blasphemy? Again? Somebody's Praying for a Hit.", New York Times, October 18, 1998
Joe DiMaggio, who died this year to often mawkish eulogies and overwrought sociology, was an ancestor of the current four: driven, selfish, unidimensional in his playing days.
-- Robert Lipsyte, "Time for Sports Heroes to Start Acting in a Heroic Way.", New York Times, August 22, 1999
Mawkish originally meant "maggoty" (from Middle English mawke, maggot), hence squeamish, nauseating, hence tending to render squeamish or make nauseated, especially because of excessive sentimentality.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for mawkish
