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.
Nostalgia➦
The condition of being homesick; homesickness.
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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.
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.
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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