sentimental

Etymology

It is formed from English sentiment + -al.^[2][3][4][5] Sentiment is from Old French sentement and Medieval Latin sentīmentum (“feeling”), from Latin sentiō (“to feel”).^[3][2] According to the OED, Littré and Hatzfeld–Darmesteter, French sentimental is a borrowing of the English word as Laurence Sterne used it, and so is German sentimental.^[2][6][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of people and their feelings and actions, marked by refined and elevated feeling: 1749, in a letter of Lady Bradshaigh to Samuel Richardson.^[2][7] The sense was at first a favourable one.^[2][3] Klein credits Laurence Sterne with coining the word in the title of his Sentimental Journey, which he dates 1767,^[6] but the OED and Merriam-Webster record it from 1749.^[2][7]

Semantic evolution

In the mid-18th century the word was a fashionable one, applied to what arose from or appealed to feeling rather than reason (1752) and to writing that appealed to the tender emotions (1765).^[2][3] Sterne's A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) carried it abroad: when Joseph-Pierre Frenais translated the book as Voyage sentimental (1769), he kept the English word, saying no French expression could render it, and a French review of the same year said the title could not be translated satisfactorily.^[8] The unfavourable sense, too readily swayed by feeling or showing it to excess, is implied by 1768 in sentimentality,^[3] and the Shorter Oxford notes that the word is now used chiefly of exaggerated or superficial emotion.^[4] From 1891 it also described what is a matter of sentiment rather than of material interest, as in sentimental grievance.^[2] In Australian rhyming slang a sentimental, from sentimental bloke (after the title of C. J. Dennis's 1915 collection of poems), is a smoke, a cigarette.^[9]

Timeline

• 1749 – of people and their feelings, marked by refined feeling.^[2][7]
• 1752 – arising from feeling rather than reason.^[2]
• 1764 – arising from refined aesthetic emotion (obsolete by 1769).^[2]
• 1765 – of writing or music, appealing to the tender emotions.^[2]
• 1768 – too tender-hearted, implied in sentimentality.^[3]
• 1784 – the sentimental, used as a noun.^[2]
• 1891 – a matter of sentiment, not material interest: sentimental grievance.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Governed by feeling or emotion rather than by reason, especially to an excessive or mawkish degree: He was too sentimental to throw away the old letters.^{[7][10][11][4]}
2. Arising from feeling rather than from thought or practical interest: The watch had only sentimental value.^[7][2][4]
3. Appealing to the tender or romantic emotions: a sentimental ballad.^[10][11][2]
4. Of, relating to or marked by sentiment.^[10][7]

Noun

1. (rare) A sentimental person.^[7][2]

Word family

• sentimentally
• antisentimental
• hypersentimental
• oversentimental
• semisentimental
• sentimentalism
• sentimentalist
• sentimentality

Related words

• sentiment
• sense
• sentience

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Tréguer, Pascal, Word Histories, wordhistories.net, p. "How French borrowed ‘sentimental’ from English", 21 March 2025
9. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
10. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt