Sappy

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈsæpi/

Definitions

1. Excessively sentimental or emotional in a way that seems overly sweet or insincere
2. Characterized by a level of sentimentality that can appear overly naive or excessively sweet
3. Exhibiting an emotional quality that may be perceived as cloying or insincere

Etymology: Before it meant gushingly sentimental, "sappy" described plants and wood. Its Old English ancestor, "sæpiġ," meant "full of sap" or "succulent," and it was built simply from "sap" plus the adjective-forming suffix "-y." The sense of juicy, wet, or sap-filled survived in English for centuries, so a log or a green branch could be called sappy long before a person could be. The jump to emotion followed a familiar pattern: something full of sap is soft, pliable, and easily squeezed, and that softness became a metaphor for a mind or a story that is too easily moved. The modern sense of overly sweet, naive sentiment grew out of that image of softness rather than out of any idea of tasting or sweetness itself. The word is related to a whole family of "juicy" words across Germanic languages, including German "saftig," Dutch "sappig," and Swedish "saftig." English also has a doublet, "zaftig," which came in through Yiddish and means full-bodied or plump, a rare case of two words from one root moving into very different corners of the vocabulary.

Synonyms: sentimental, maudlin, overemotional

Antonyms: insensitive, stoic