Modifies a noun

• sentimentality: But maybe the program's greatest achievement was avoiding mawkish sentimentality.

• sentiment: But for some reason, the sheer emotional nudity on show - plus all that mawkish teenage sentiment really had me on edge.

• memory: They don't ship overseas " Impatiently Bond lit a cigarette...slammed the mawkish memories back into their long-closed file.

• speech: Conducting yourself in this fashion does not reveal a high regard or concern for those uniformed angels you eulogize in mawkish political speeches.

Modifying Another Word

• never: She is unsentimental, unpretentious, never mawkish, never the slightest bit swamped with self-pity, nor ever less than clear.

• not: It was sentimental, moving, yet not mawkish.

• occasionally: Pretty much all of the program was embarrassing now, and not just the occasionally mawkish serious bits.

Used with adjective complement

• become: What was once sweet has become mawkish, and the once exquisite simile appears little more than an ingenious conceit.

• get: Let's not get mawkish here, suffice to say that life has been kind to me in an absent-minded ' who's he?