What's the difference between adorn and tinsel?

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.

Tinsel


Definition:

  • (n.) A shining material used for ornamental purposes; especially, a very thin, gauzelike cloth with much gold or silver woven into it; also, very thin metal overlaid with a thin coating of gold or silver, brass foil, or the like.
  • (n.) Something shining and gaudy; something superficially shining and showy, or having a false luster, and more gay than valuable.
  • (a.) Showy to excess; gaudy; specious; superficial.
  • (v. t.) To adorn with tinsel; to deck out with cheap but showy ornaments; to make gaudy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The tinsel coiled around a jug of squash and bauble in the strip lighting made a golf-ball size knot of guilt burn in my throat.
  • (2) Men dressed as Hindu deities, with tinsel crowns and tridents, wait for their turn on the stage.
  • (3) Imagine the biggest supermarket you've ever been to, then replace all the food with tinsel, artificial trees and decorations, and you'll be close to the spectacle that Bronner's Christmas Wonderland provides.
  • (4) Baubles and tinsel lose their shine Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sales of Christmas baubles fell.
  • (5) He’s a great leader, a great Australian and a great prime minister,” howls Reynolds, in a checked shirt, striking white beard and with tinsel around his neck.
  • (6) Britain’s retailers are hanging out the tinsel and looking forward to a bumper Christmas, with unemployment down, living standards finally climbing and house prices on the rise.
  • (7) This year, after the turkey and tinsel are put away, why not start small and plot a sustainable course for success?
  • (8) Ignoring my entreaties that you really didn’t need to dress up to go to a gig, my daughter had her hair tied up with tinsel, her best party dress on and a purple sequined stole.
  • (9) Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel, sparkled and winked.
  • (10) So here we are in frosty, socially conscious Poplar, passing tinsel-garlanded forceps to the doughty district nurses of Nonnatus House as they tend to a flurry of imperilled postwar flimflams.
  • (11) The reason I am so non-judgmental of Hoffman or Bieber and so condemnatory of the pop cultural tinsel that adorns the reporting around them is that I am a drug addict in recovery, so like any drug addict I know exactly how Hoffman felt when he "went back out".
  • (12) Like most of his generation, he became infected by the mutant spores of rock’n’roll – Buddy Holly and Little Richard were favourites – but he also loved the tinsel, glamour and artifice of old-time show business.
  • (13) The duchess sat at a table with a group of children decorating picture frames with stars and tinsel flowers.
  • (14) Photograph: Alamy After two years of growing sales from 2011, sales of festive products such as baubles, tinsel and artificial Christmas trees dropped almost a third last year.
  • (15) We stopped, and Susie motioned for Mae to open a gate decorated in yellow Christmas tinsel.
  • (16) It was bizarre coming to work: there was the big Christmas tree up in the square, and every set was covered in tinsel and Christmas lights.
  • (17) At full-time golden tinsel exploded from the rafters at the Stade de France and it rained down on to the pitch.
  • (18) His penchant for pinstripe trousers, Cuban heels and chunky jewellery meant Davis stood out from his fellow BBC correspondents, as did the rumours of tattoos, pierced nipples (office nickname: Tinsel Tits) and a Prince Albert, which he has consistently refused to confirm or deny.
  • (19) Look under the tinsel in LA, they say, and there's real tinsel.
  • (20) Sue and Brian Legg, in their 60s, window shopping beneath tinsel banners in the George Yard shopping arcade, couldn't really see what the fuss was about.