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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.
Examples of mawkish in a Sentence
Ben Travers, IndieWire, 28 Feb. 2025
Roz rescues wildlife in a Noah’s Ark analogue, then goes from being a disingenuous Christ figure offering sacrifice and promise (but no resurrection) to a mawkish maternal figure.
—Armond White, National Review, 26 Feb. 2025
Beyond all the legal and even medical specifics resides a sense of communal understanding, and — at the risk of sounding mawkish — a deep and abiding love for one’s fellow human beings, which Feder taps into with aplomb.
—Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 28 Jan. 2025
Co-directed with Jewish Israeli filmmaker Yaron Shani, the movie paints a subtle picture of a society split along fissures religious, political, cultural, and economic, without ever chiding his characters or dipping into mawkish sentimentality.
—Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Sep. 2024
See All Example Sentences for mawkish
Cite this Entry
“Mawkish.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mawkish. Accessed 12 Mar. 2025.
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mawkish
adjective
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