What is the meaning of sentimental?

By Catalogs Editorial Staff

The meaning of sentimental is clear to many a

?Sentimental Journey? … This song was a huge hit. It was written by Les Brown and Ben Homer, and the lyrics were penned by Arthur Green. Doris Day, who was the vocalist for Les Brown and His Band of Renown. She had her first number-one hit with Sentimental Journey in 1945, which was released at the end of World War II. The song became synonymous with the return of veterans.

There have been many songs written about sentiment because it is such a powerful emotion.

What is the meaning of sentimental? It is the opposite of dispassionate, which is equal to cool, detached and unemotional. Someone who is sentimental often expresses or experiences tender feelings or emotions about love, or nostalgia or pity. Someone who is sentimental is usually quite fervent in his expressiveness.

When a sentimental person gets choked up, boy, they really get choked up and sometimes sob.

A sentimental person tears up at the sound of a song that they associate with something memorable, such as their first love, or the memory of a loved one that is no longer around. A sentimental person also often attaches strong emotional meaning to a jewelry, keepsakes and mementos of people, places or events.

A sentimental person might not be your best choice to deliver the eulogy at a loved one?s funeral because they might become emotionally overwrought and go to pieces.

Some people claim that a sentimental person is emotionally weak, because the sentimental person is susceptible to emotions and often succumbs to tearful displays. Sentiment is a fine thing and nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. It means that your heartstrings have been touched by something or someone to such a degree that you will always remember that act of kindness or love or that event. When you are reminded of it, you are going to cry, or at the very least tear up.

Many people cry when they find an article of clothing, or an old letter or a book that belonged to someone they loved but who has passed on or who has left.

Sentiment’s cousin: Nostalgia

Not only does this bring about sentimental feelings but also nostalgia, which is very close to the same thing as sentiment.

Nostalgia is the arousal of certain feelings because of thoughts and yearnings for icons of a time gone by, or a place or a person, and a longing for that time, place or person. Nostalgia, as is true with sentiment, brings on feelings of happiness or sadness or a desire for that which you are recalling and which you can no longer have or experience.

Nostalgia, like sentiment, can make you sad at times, or it can be a poignant memory that is sweet. When traveling travel back to your childhood home, an adult is apt to experience a blend of nostalgia and sentiment even if their childhood wasn?t all that it should have been.

And even though a person may be way past the point of crying when confronted with certain memories or sounds or sights, something happens inside when an individual is faced with a sentimental experience? the throat gets tight and the center of the chest does a little rumba because the person has been emotionally moved.

When the Star Spangled Banner is played, it makes Americans feel patriotically sentimental, and it may evoke nostalgia as they remember war time and how it affected them and their loved ones.

Sentimental people are emotional people but even unemotional people can feel sentimental at times, although they may not like to admit it.

Men, perhaps, don?t show emotion as often as women but then there are those who show it almost too freely. John Boehner, Majority Leader, cries nearly every time he makes a public speech, or at least it seems that way. He does have beautiful (teary) blue eyes but his misting up, and his overt emotionality is a little disconcerting to some. It is not commonplace to see men, or women, who are in positions of power crying at the drop of a hat.

Sentiment may be an emotion that is more familiar to the elderly than to the young because there is so much behind a person when he gets up in years, and he realizes how important every step of his life, and every relationship led to where he is now.