Schmaltzy

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /ˈʃmɒltsi/

Definitions

  1. Characterized by excessive sentimentality, melodrama, or cheap emotional appeal, often in an affected or insincere manner
  2. Excessively sentimental and melodramatic in a way that feels forced, artificial, or designed to manipulate emotions through clichéd appeal
  3. Marked by overwrought emotional expression or maudlin sentimentality that comes across as contrived and lacking genuine sincerity

Etymology: In Jewish kitchens across Eastern Europe, cooks rendered chicken fat slowly in a pan until it turned golden, with crisp bits of skin and onion left at the bottom. They called the fat "shmalts." A few decades after Jewish immigrants brought it to America, the same word was being used to sneer at music that laid on the feeling too thick. Yiddish took "shmalts" from Middle High German "smalz," the ancestor of modern German "Schmalz," meaning fat, lard or dripping. It is related to the German verb "schmelzen," to melt. Schmalz is fat that has been melted down. The same Germanic root gives English "smelt," the melting of ore. It also reached English by a longer route as "enamel," through Old French "esmail," a word for glass melted onto metal. Rendered fat and the glaze on a medieval reliquary are distant cousins. In New York, and in Yiddish-speaking neighbourhoods generally, "shmalts" was the cheap, ever-present fat of the poor kitchen, rich and heavy and spread on everything. It moved from the kitchen to the bandstand. By the mid-1930s American jazz musicians were calling sentimental, syrupy playing "schmaltz": weepy violins, swooning ballads, music greased with feeling until it dripped. The adjective formed from it, schmaltzy, appears in the same period. It is an ordinary English formation, the noun plus "-y," like "greasy" or "oily," and the two words are close in spirit. The metaphor worked because of where the word came from. Melted fat is pleasant in small amounts and becomes cloying very quickly. Calling a love song schmaltzy says that whoever made it has added more than anyone wanted, and that the rich taste is hiding something thin underneath.

Synonyms: sentimental, maudlin

Antonyms: unsentimental, sophisticated