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Sentimental vs. Nostalgia — What's the Difference?

Difference Between Sentimental and Nostalgia

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Definitions

Sentimental

Having, showing, or caused by emotion, especially tender or affectionate feeling
I have sentimental ties to the small town I grew up in.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word nostalgia is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain" or "ache", and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home.

Sentimental

Having, showing, or caused by strong or extravagant tenderness or sadness, often in an idealized way
"He had no sentimental illusions about poverty's virtues" (Sherill Tippins).

Nostalgia

A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.

Sentimental

Characterized by sentiment, sentimentality or excess emotion.
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Nostalgia

The condition of being homesick; homesickness.

Sentimental

Derived from emotion rather than reason; of or caused by sentiment.

Nostalgia

A longing for home or familiar surroundings; homesickness.

Sentimental

Romantic.

Nostalgia

(transferred sense) A bittersweet yearning for the things of the past.
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Sentimental

Having, expressing, or containing a sentiment or sentiments; abounding with moral reflections; containing a moral reflection; didactic.
Nay, ev'n each moral sentimental stroke,Where not the character, but poet, spoke,He lopped, as foreign to his chaste design,Nor spared a useless, though a golden line.

Nostalgia

Homesickness; esp., a severe and sometimes fatal form of melancholia, due to homesickness.

Sentimental

Inclined to sentiment; having an excess of sentiment or sensibility; indulging the sensibilities for their own sake; artificially or affectedly tender; - often in a reproachful sense.
A sentimental mind is rather prone to overwrought feeling and exaggerated tenderness.

Nostalgia

A sentimental yearning to return to an earlier time remembered as happier or more pleasant, or a former place evoking happy memories; a longing to experience again a former happy time; as, a nostalgia for the brotherhood of the Woodstock music festival; a nostalgia for the comradeship of one's college friends.

Sentimental

Addressed or pleasing to the emotions only, usually to the weaker and the unregulated emotions.

Nostalgia

Longing for something past

Sentimental

Given to or marked by sentiment or sentimentality

Sentimental

Effusively or insincerely emotional;
A bathetic novel
Maudlin expressons of sympathy
Mushy effusiveness
A schmaltzy song
Sentimental soap operas
Slushy poetry

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