mawkish
/ˈmɔːkɪʃ/
"mawkish" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“mawkish” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Excessively or falsely sentimental; showing a sickly excess of sentiment.
Corpus desk
Index EN-mawkish · mawkish · English
mawkish · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "M" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mawkish |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈmɔːkɪʃ/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “mawkish” in English
Rare enough to double-check
mawkish is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective, transcribed /ˈmɔːkɪʃ/. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for mawkish in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
Etymologically, the entry records: From mawk + -ish. The correct English form is mawkish, spelled M-A-W-K-I-S-H.
Definition
- 1Excessively or falsely sentimental; showing a sickly excess of sentiment.
- 2Feeling sick, queasy.
- 3Sickening or insipid in taste or smell.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how mawkish appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Some of Mr. Williams’s performances were criticized for a mawkish sentimentality, like “Patch Adams,” a 1998 film that once again cast him as a good-hearted doctor, and “Bicentennial Man,” a 1999 science-fiction feature in which he played an android.
I found [Christoph] Buchel’s appropriation of the boat in which so many migrants lost their lives a vile and mawkish spectacle in the context of the biennale.
Etymology
From mawk + -ish.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.