maudlin [E17th] Nowadays maudlin is restricted to describing a tearful, sentimental drunk or weak sentimentality in general, but in the Middle Ages it was a standard form of the second half of Mary Magdalene’s name, which is also the source of the first name Madeleine. In the Bible Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jesus, and in later legend was identified with the ‘sinful woman’ who anointed Jesus’s feet with perfume and her tears (Luke 7:36–50). She was supposed to have spent the rest of her life repenting her sins, and was thus often shown in art weeping. Magdalene simply means that she came from Magdala, a town at the Sea of Galilee which got its name from the Aramaic for ‘tower’.