Schmaltz

Schmaltz is a Yiddish term, often used in English, referring to excessive sentimentality, mawkishness, or cloying emotionalism, particularly in art, music, or writing. It implies a display of emotion that feels insincere, overly sweet, and potentially manipulative to elicit a strong emotional response from the audience. schmaltz often relies on familiar tropes and clichés to evoke feelings of nostalgia, warmth, or sadness, frequently crossing the line into the melodramatic. The term carries a pejorative connotation, suggesting a lack of originality or depth, and a reliance on cheap emotional tricks. It can also describe overly-sweet food or cooking; typically food cooked in fat. It is a subjective term, and what one person considers schmaltz, another might find genuinely moving or appealing.

Schmaltz meaning with examples

• The film's score was so full of schmaltz that it became difficult to take the story seriously, the swelling strings and tear-jerking melodies pushing every emotional button imaginable, leaving little room for genuine feeling. It relied more on predictable emotional cues than on any inherent drama. A truly effective score supports, not overwhelms.
• The romance novel was dripping with schmaltz, full of clichéd declarations of love and improbable scenarios, making it more comical than romantic. The characters were so idealized and the conflicts so easily resolved, that it seemed to operate in a separate reality. I'd have preferred more realistic characterization.
• The politician's speech was loaded with schmaltz, using manipulative language and sentimental stories to sway voters rather than addressing concrete issues. His delivery was so overwrought and his promises so grand, that genuine concern faded. An address that was more factually sound would be more credible.
• My grandmother's collection of porcelain dolls, while beautifully made, always struck me as a bit of schmaltz, representing an idealized and overly-sweet version of childhood. I can see that my grandma would have liked this representation, as she tended to idealize her life. It just feels a little manufactured.
• The holiday commercial, with its saccharine imagery and contrived family moments, was the epitome of schmaltz. It tried so hard to evoke a sense of warmth and belonging, the whole thing was uncomfortably manipulative. It was a textbook case of over-the-top sentimentality designed to sell products.

Schmaltz Synonyms

bathos, cloying, corny, gushiness, hokey, mawkishness, melodrama, saccharine, sentimentality, treacle

Schmaltz Antonyms

authenticity, realism, restraint, sincerity, subtlety, understatedness, unemotional

Schmaltz Crossword Answers

3 Letters

GOO

4 Letters

MUSH

6 Letters

BATHOS

7 Letters

TREACLE, SCHMALZ, SHMALTZ

9 Letters

MUSHINESS

14 Letters

SENTIMENTALITY