What's the difference between adorn and decorate?

Adorn


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To deck or dress with ornaments; to embellish; to set off to advantage; to render pleasing or attractive.
  • (n.) Adornment.
  • (a.) Adorned; decorated.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Fluttering in the background was a black flag adorned with white script, the “black flag of jihad”.
  • (2) Having started out preening (he tells a former colleague that he lives "the life of Riley"), he ends up howling alone on a small rock, the decision to adorn himself with a beautiful young wife having stolen his stature, robbed him of his dignity.
  • (3) As I walked through the reception area and into the locker rooms and saunas themselves, I spotted old magazines littered on mid-century coffee tables and pictures of Finnish pin-ups adorning the wood-panelled walls.
  • (4) On the other side, underlining that this is a battle that is likely to be partly played out in public, deepening the divide between player and president, the sports supplement of the newspaper La Razón opened with a front-page photograph of Ramos celebrating a goal by lifting his hand to his heart, where Madrid’s badge adorns the shirt.
  • (5) The exercise yard is adorned with poignant children's paintings in response to school trips here.
  • (6) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Artwork by feminist Linda Stein adorns the waiting room of Choices Women’s Medical Center in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York.
  • (7) Another stop on the Cocteau trail is the town hall's register office (Place Ardoïno), which Cocteau adorned with wall and ceiling murals.
  • (8) It is in a majestic salon, the walls of which are decorated with flamboyant 18th-century Flemish tapestries with a Tiepolo fresco adorning the ceiling, while the terrace overlooks a landscaped garden.
  • (9) There were fans too, around 2,000 of them waiting in the sunshine, where a platform had been built on the pitch adorned with the trophies Casillas won during a 17-year career here.
  • (10) Team GB has a motto, which has adorned the back of thousands of souvenir shirts at the park and beyond, "Better never stops".
  • (11) Despite the arrival of the Argentinian Ulloa also for a club record fee, it was Leicester’s Thai owner, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, whose face adorned the matchday programme on their return to the top flight.
  • (12) I wanted a better life.” Dressed for the festival in a smart black skirt and a high-necked blouse adorned with a cameo necklace, she is enjoying the lavish spectacle.
  • (13) But it's obvious from the start that there are no deferential nods to Egyptian, classical, modernist or postmodernist modes, no reassuring "quotes" like the over-cute pilasters that adorn the extension to London's National Gallery by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.
  • (14) Pittsburgh's airport has been adorned with signs bearing the word "welcome" in the language of every G20 nation and the city is keen to show off its own hi-tech economic revival from the ashes of a once-thriving steel industry.
  • (15) Sitting in the storeroom in the Treasury that has now been transformed into his office, adorned with his choice of striking contemporary art, Myners insists that the £16.9m pension pot initially handed to former RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin had been "cooked up" before he got involved in the brutal negotiations that fateful October weekend.
  • (16) Overnight, Cuba’s flag was quietly added to the others that adorn the lobby of the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom.
  • (17) She has been a member of the American star’s fan club for six years and was lucky enough to meet her idol in 2012 – a signed T-shirt and framed picture of the pair together adorns her bedroom wall.
  • (18) But after being mauled in the media for sartorial crimes – including a bright pink blazer and white shirt adorned with heart motifs – Hatoyama will be buoyed by the news that a Shanghai-based shirt-maker is selling copies of his most infamous garment as a tribute to his "individuality" .
  • (19) Overnight, hundreds of new pieces adorned the walls of the underpass where Bieber had left his mark.
  • (20) The sounds he discovered on his guitar, refined during hours of solitary tinkering in his home studio, adorned records by Elvis Presley, Hank Williams and thousands of other artists, both country and pop.

Decorate


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To deck with that which is becoming, ornamental, or honorary; to adorn; to beautify; to embellish; as, to decorate the person; to decorate an edifice; to decorate a lawn with flowers; to decorate the mind with moral beauties; to decorate a hero with honors.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Behind her balcony, decorated with a flourishing pothos plant and a monarch butterfly chrysalis tied to a succulent with dental floss, sits the university’s power plant.
  • (2) "The proposed 'reform' is designed to legitimise this blatantly unfair, police state practice, while leaving the rest of the criminal procedure law as misleading decoration," said Professor Jerome Cohen, an expert on China at New York University's School of Law.
  • (3) Structural studies indicate that caveolae are decorated on their cytoplasmic surface by a unique array of filaments or strands that form striated coatings.
  • (4) The first-floor lounge is decorated in plush deep pink, with a mix of contemporary and neoclassical decor, and an antique dining table and chandelier.
  • (5) A small clinic consisting of 1 room decorated with pamphlets against AIDS, malaria, and other diseases was managed by the chief primary health care (PHC) assistant named Joseph.
  • (6) I also earned meals by decorating a wall in a local restaurant.
  • (7) CI evenly decorated the negatively charged surface of endothelial cells in the control brains, in contrast to markedly diminished iron binding capacity of endothelial cells in low pH-treated hemispheres.
  • (8) As expected, antibodies to actin decorated the microfilaments of the microvilli, giving rise to a very intense fluorescence.
  • (9) Men might not have frills and furbelows as women traditionally do, but they’ve got spurious function: knobs on their watches or extra pockets on their jackets that are just as decorative as anything women wear.” 6.
  • (10) Ornamental plants have long been used for indoor decoration.
  • (11) Richard Master is CEO and founder of MCS Industries, Inc, the leading US supplier of picture frames and decorative mirrors, with $170m in sales, 160 US employees and factories in Mexico and China.
  • (12) Microtubule depolymerization is associated with the binding of vinblastine in approximately molar stoichiometry to tubulin in microtubules with apparent low affinity, as determined by binding experiments with radiolabeled vinblastine and by the ability of vinblastine to inhibit DEAE-dextran decoration of microtubule surfaces.
  • (13) In fact, in keeping with its usual practice, the White House hasn't released any details about the menu, the decor, where dinner will be served or what Michelle Obama will wear and doesn't plan to until a few hours before Wednesday's event begins.
  • (14) He has decorated the former shop unit with a nautical theme.
  • (15) Ultra thin, even, and grainless tantalum films have been found effective in eliminating the charging artifacts caused by external fields, and the decoration artifacts caused by crystal growth as seen in gold films.
  • (16) Combined with gold-streptavidin, BHPP decorated the actin filament system at the light and electron microscopic level faithfully and with satisfactory density.
  • (17) The EPR data from [15N,2H]MTSL-S1 decorating fibers are combined with the fluorescence polarization data from the 1,5-IAEDANS-labeled fibers to map the global angular transition of the labeled cross-bridges due to nucleotide binding by an analytical method described in the accompanying paper [Burghardt, T. P., & Ajtai, K. (1992) Biochemistry (preceding paper in this issue)].
  • (18) Many families choose to decorate the coffin, either in the days leading up to the funeral or as part of the ceremony.
  • (19) Upon examination of the immunoreaction at the ultrastructural level, the ubiquitin antiserum decorated the cytokeratin filaments as well as MB filaments.
  • (20) For primary explorers, build habitats out of cardboard with sticky tape and get them to decorate their designs.