What's the difference between abject and penitent?

Abject


Definition:

  • (a.) Cast down; low-lying.
  • (a.) Sunk to a law condition; down in spirit or hope; degraded; servile; groveling; despicable; as, abject posture, fortune, thoughts.
  • (a.) To cast off or down; hence, to abase; to degrade; to lower; to debase.
  • (n.) A person in the lowest and most despicable condition; a castaway.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He is an expert on the public health problems that plague El Paso and the other cities along the international border, all of which are exacerbated by abject poverty and a burgeoning population.
  • (2) During his long stint in the witness stand, Harris was questioned at length about why he expressed abject remorse to the father for his actions, offering a little more credible explanation than he felt ending the relationship had upset the woman.
  • (3) And while Altmejd presents sexual scenes of cartoonish horror and disgust, Lucas's art has embraced lavatorial humour, abjection, self-denigration, the pithy sculptural one-liner and the obscene gesture.
  • (4) An Israeli commentator said of the first of them: "when one looks through all the lofty phraseology, all the deliberate disinformation, the hundreds of pettifogging sections, sub-sections, appendices and protocols, one clearly recognises that the Israeli victory was absolute and Palestine defeat abject."
  • (5) It is an abject failure to take the rights of females seriously.
  • (6) Obviously Pantilimon is more abject than Hart,” says Graham Lees “and Demichelis must have lied on his CV but why does no one bemoan the wretchedness, sorry, opportunity gifted to Sunderland, of Nasri’s selection?
  • (7) Indeed, we have been reminded recently of the abject poverty that many have fallen into, needing to use food banks or choose between "eating and heating" and the need for charitable institutions to step forward and help the needy.
  • (8) Now, millions of working people who would otherwise be languishing in abject poverty depend on these tax credits.
  • (9) It was an abject defeat for a leader whose response to the migration crisis deserved better.
  • (10) Meanwhile the victims are sitting there in abject poverty and have not received any compensation."
  • (11) The aim was to secure a politically and militarily allied government in a strategically important country, a mission which David Cameron amusingly declared this week to have been "accomplished" despite the western alliance's abject failure over 12 years to defeat that Taliban's rag-tag army and the refusal of the corrupt Hamid Karzai administration to play ball over the country's long-term future .
  • (12) But it bears testament, too, to the Brown government's abject failure to give a comprehensible account of itself that the opposition should find such easy pickings.
  • (13) It's all there: sexual and social confusion, vulnerability and violence, alienation and loneliness, the oscillation between feeling abject and worthless and wanting to take over the world, the fantasies of power and revenge.
  • (14) "Outright hostility, abject surrender - that's what you have seen in the past.
  • (15) The picture you have painted is one of abject squalor made worse by a generally lazy approach to hygiene.
  • (16) Smith could not have been more abjectly humiliated.
  • (17) Given the abject failure of much of the western media to scrutinise its actions – at least until it's too late – it may believe it can get away with it.
  • (18) He ended up with five during the Euro 2016 qualifying campaign but all came in the fixtures against an abject Gibraltar, featuring a hat-trick in the home game scored, memorably, from a combined total of eight yards.
  • (19) Mick Cash, RMT general secretary, said: “The abject failure by Southern rail in yesterday’s talks to take the safety issues seriously has left us with no option but to confirm further action.
  • (20) Recent weeks have seen a succession of good news stories from Iraq, including the ceremonial reopening of the national museum, whose looting in 2003 symbolised the abject failure to plan for the post-war period.

Penitent


Definition:

  • (a.) Feeling pain or sorrow on account of sins or offenses; repentant; contrite; sincerely affected by a sense of guilt, and resolved on amendment of life.
  • (a.) Doing penance.
  • (n.) One who repents of sin; one sorrowful on account of his transgressions.
  • (n.) One under church censure, but admitted to penance; one undergoing penance.
  • (n.) One under the direction of a confessor.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) 9, 333] corresponds to the induction of sequential cellular events, such as cell exit and remigration, by other antimitotic agents [C. Penit and F. Vasseur (1988) J. Immunol.
  • (2) All the same, you might have expected the "balanced scorecard" approach to directors' bonuses at HSBC to be suspended for a year to underline corporate penitence.
  • (3) Bill Clinton delivered a penitent personal confession, backed up by a political blitzkrieg, in an effort to save his presidency yesterday, just before the US Congress released independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report, giving details in support of 11 charges which could drive the president from the White House.
  • (4) Nichols, too, recalls that this Easter – just a fortnight after Pope Francis was elected – Westminster Cathedral found itself awash with penitents.
  • (5) Australian election 2016: Malcolm Turnbull says Coalition can form majority despite dramatic losses Read more Turnbull is now in a position where he has to bow penitently before the voting public, acknowledging voter disillusionment, vowing to work harder, acknowledging the extent of the campaign miscalculations.
  • (6) This is the monster that Spare Rib faces, even as it wields a penitent Galloway – dressed, ideally, as a naughty kitten.
  • (7) This he could do only in a series of acts of memory, public penitence and contrition, in one of which I was peripherally involved.
  • (8) Ofcom is in a penitent mood over the unsuccessful pairing of Johnson with Andy Duncan , so Burns has joined immediately as chairman-designate.
  • (9) The Romantics’ cult of the ruin was reborn as a cult of penitence.
  • (10) Arena is not penitent, however, as he is expected to be.
  • (11) Meanwhile, an apparently penitent Mr Clinton made his most emotional appeal so far for the mercy and forgiveness of the American people, upbraiding himself as a sinner and issuing fresh apologies for his record of sex and lies with Ms Lewinsky.
  • (12) There was no penitence in his negotiating stance but it gave Mandela what he needed.
  • (13) One carving, of Mary sheltering a crowd of tiny penitents under her cloak, created a scandal in the 1850s when it was taken from its original place, over the door of an oratorio in Venice (which survives, the stone still showing the scars from the removal of the sculpture) and sold to the V&A soon after the museum opened, in 1852.
  • (14) The priest who hears a confession can always advise the penitent to inform the law enforcement even if the instruction is ignored, whereas Siri does not offer moral guidance at all and it seems that Apple is working on a system that it could not decrypt even if it wanted to.
  • (15) Now it is being relaunched under the journalist Charlotte Raven, who promises a "penitent" George Galloway at the launch party, in some kind of yet to be revealed menial role, which is excellent, but not enough.
  • (16) On the basis of these results and of a previous work on the ionic basis of the inward rectification of Purkinje cells (Crepel & Penit-Soria, 1986), it appears that these neurones exhibit a well developed alpha (possibly alpha 1)-adrenergic inhibition of a low-threshold Ca conductance and a Ca-dependent K conductance operating near resting potential.
  • (17) Perhaps, though, this response was because he felt he was untouchable, for his penitent tour of Liverpool earned him more admirers.
  • (18) Backers will be treated to a glamorous Shoreditch party where "costumed penitents", including the columnist Rod Liddle and MP George Galloway , will serve cocktails, Raven adds.
  • (19) If Blair wants material for his vanity project – “why are people so disillusioned with establishment politics?” – then how about starting with politicians who face no penalties for their colossal misdeeds, and continue to exert huge power and influence without any apparent shame or even penitence?
  • (20) Those awful days when James and Rupert had to appear penitent, shaking their heads over the failure of minions who inexplicably withheld crucial information from them, must feel like a bad dream.