maudlin

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Played as a maudlin admission that she’s a fallen woman, this scene would doom the play to a dusty footnote in O’Neill’s oeuvre.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 14, 2025

Lyrical but not maudlin, the book navigates family disagreements, competing philosophies and different ways the human spirit can manifest in the human body.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 12, 2025

He’s also invested his protagonist with a self-deprecating sense of humor that keeps his pessimism from veering into maudlin territory.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 6, 2025

But the film eventually turns maudlin, going so far as to include a prolonged scene where Adam says goodbye to the memory of his parents in a restaurant they used to frequent as a family.

From Salon • Apr. 3, 2025

I could almost hear Luzan’s bird-high voice, a bizarre pitch that like much else about him was a little silly, a dress of maudlin order on a man of such girth and weight.

From "Native Speaker" by Chang-rae Lee