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The Squirming Origins of Mawkish
Mawkish really opens up a can of worms—or maggots, as it were: the word wriggled out from Middle English mawke, meaning “maggot.” Its earliest sense, used in the late 17th century but now obsolete, was synonymous with squeamish (understandable!) but not long after that mawkish was used to describe an unpleasant, nauseating, often sickeningly sweet flavor. It’s no surprise that a figurative sense of mawkish, used to describe things that are full of “sickly sweet” sentimentality, arose almost concurrently, one of several food texture- and taste-related words favored by critics to show disdain for art they deem overly emotive, including gooey, saccharine, mushy, and schmaltzy.
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Examples of mawkish in a Sentence
Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Sep. 2024
And the hints for today’s groups are: Yellow group — leader or main thing
Green group — these can be prickly
Blue group — mawkish movies, perhaps
Purple group — these have a limit, some might say
What Are Today’s Connections Groups?
—Kris Holt, Forbes, 15 Sep. 2024
His desire to wrest explicit meaning out of the mother’s experience and corral viewers toward a single conclusion unwittingly places The Deliverance in mawkish and disappointingly cartoonish territory.
—Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Sep. 2019
Now, after the two men canoodle, there’s a mawkish finale meant to invoke purpose and principle.
—Armond White, National Review, 26 July 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near mawkish
Cite this Entry
“Mawkish.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mawkish. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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mawkish
adjective
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