Sentimentality is feeling indulged beyond what the occasion deserves. Cloying sentimentality, avoid sentimentality, mere sentimentality.
It is always a criticism: the charge is that the emotion is unearned, produced by the thing rather than warranted by it. Distinguishing it from genuine feeling is one of the standing problems of criticism, and the usual test is whether the work does the work or simply signals for a response. Note sentimental, sentiment.
1nounsentimentalityFeeling indulged beyond what the occasion deserves.
“The film is ruined by sentimentality, with crying children in every scene.”
sentimentality is an excess of feeling.
German
Empfindsamkeit
English, today
sentimentality
From sentimental + -ity. The music sense is a calque of German Empfindsamkeit.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA