What's the difference between affability and amiability?

Affability


Definition:

  • (n.) The quality of being affable; readiness to converse; courteousness in receiving others and in conversation; complaisant behavior.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The claim has stunned a community who knew him not as a pale spectre in Taliban videos but as the tall, affable young man who served coffee and deftly fended off jokes about Billy Elliot – he did ballet along with karate, fencing, paragliding and mountain biking.
  • (2) He is affable but hyperactive, or maybe he has consumed too much white powder.
  • (3) As a businessman I had an obligation.” He also contrasted his alleged affability with Clinton’s remark during the first Democratic debate that she viewed Republicans as “an enemy”.
  • (4) When he appeared on Desert Island Discs, for example, Kirsty Young expressed surprise that he was so affable and giving, wondering aloud why she might have thought otherwise.
  • (5) Musk has a reputation for being prickly but when I meet him at SpaceX , his headquarters west of Los Angeles, he is affable and chatty, cheerfully expounding on space exploration, climate change, Richard Branson and Hollywood.
  • (6) His decisiveness and affability were valuable assets, but much more than this, he was one of the few who sought both to understand and to explain what was happening.
  • (7) It turns up at quarter to ten, deposited by an affable chap in a uniform.
  • (8) Lucky Richard was assigned to Poke ’s most affable hosts, the restaurant critic Tracey MacLeod and her colleague, the rapper LL Cool J , who plied him with fudge and polystyrene all day, while I was understandably ignored by my master, a capable young comic newspaper columnist called Michael Andrew Gove.
  • (9) Talha Asmal, 17, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire , who reportedly detonated a vehicle fitted with explosives while fighting for the militant group in Iraq, was described as “a loving, kind, caring and affable teenager” by his devastated family.
  • (10) Speaking after the event, which was not open to journalists, the shareholder described Grade as "affable", but questioned whether he had delivered for investors.
  • (11) But in the meantime, they can continue to muddle along as they are: affable, a bit posh and fine with it.
  • (12) It's all the fault of that blasted weather, of course, but the affable Stan Wawrinka isn't happy, the Swiss taking aim at the tournament organisers for messing up his schedule, making him play a possible five matches in seven days and potentially wrecking his hopes of adding to the Australian Open he won in January.
  • (13) He was bright, intrepid, determined and full of character ... A very talented footballer and magnificent marine he had a lot to be proud of, yet I knew him to be an affable, generous, loyal and modest young man."
  • (14) Rwanda has a flourishing economy and well-oiled PR machine, and the affable Kagame uses that most democratic of media, Twitter .
  • (15) Some people have encountered an affable man with a beard and a hat.
  • (16) Boehner was referring to a Wall Street Journal report quoting an unnamed "senior administration official" as saying: “We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts “because what matters is the end result.” Boehner says he's known for his affable demeanor and fair-mindedness.
  • (17) By contrast it was the outwardly affable Harold Macmillan who pulled off a gruesome "night of the long knives", ditching a third of his cabinet overnight in an exercise named after Hitler's rather bloodier dispatching of his own lieutenants in the SA.
  • (18) Its affable 79-year-old owner, Salome Gutiérrez, has extended Del Bravo to include a Tejas y su Musica (The Texas Music Museum) honouring Lydia and other local artists.
  • (19) If Obama can get his proposals through Congress, the affable economist will have a lasting memorial in the Volcker Rule.
  • (20) He described O'Brien as a "very affable, warm and hospitable" man who was always unafraid to speak his mind.

Amiability


Definition:

  • (n.) The quality of being amiable; amiableness; sweetness of disposition.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The Normandie Design is plum in the middle of the amiable chaos of South American city life, in Santa Efigênia, where the streets are thronged with tiny electronics stores – great if you fancy a fake Chinese iPhone.
  • (2) Graf said that the idea of partnerships - such as technology sharing and bolstering regional and local news by other broadcasters - raised the question of when "amiable cooperation becomes anti-competitive cartel".
  • (3) An amiable and professional friendship was quickly established between myself and the nursing staff that was based on mutual respect.
  • (4) Let's amble amiably together, towards the announcement.
  • (5) But on the whole "Eck" is amiable, making time for reporters, giving spot interview after spot interview, chatting to anyone who catches his attention, whether from a major UK paper or a Netherlands radio station he has never heard of, all very different from the increasingly tightly controlled appearances of UK leaders.
  • (6) Further on, an Emirati sheikh chatted amiably with an Iraqi MP wanted on charges of terrorism.
  • (7) And it continues today, the discourse and the amiable discord, by turns legalistic, linguistic, poetic, artistic, metaphysical, practical, transcendental, earthy, comedic.
  • (8) Amiable, wise and pink-cheeked, with the same taste for the finer things we have witnessed in certain popes – let us remember Benedict’s red leather loafers – it’s all but impossible, once you’ve read his new novel, not to imagine how fabulous he would look in a white zucchetto , with a cape to match, and a socking great ring on his finger for journalists to kiss as they try desperately not to reveal the sin of envy in his presence (before he was a million-selling novelist, Harris was a hack just like them – and me).
  • (9) Ochola, an amiable man, insists that he has written to the ministry of energy to plead Katine's case, but has had no joy.
  • (10) Small children adored this highly coloured quartet of amiable toddler-people.
  • (11) My housemate was an amiable soul named Herbert Pocket.
  • (12) His exclamatory sock-cymbal sound, often played at the turning point in a theme, or at the close, appeared to be struck with a dismissive blow like a boxer's right cross, and would be all the more arresting for its contrast with Jones's general demeanour of happiness in his work, smiling fit to bust, unleashing a stream of effusive - and highly rhythmic - chortles and grunts, sometimes eyeballing his partners with baleful amiability from the drum stool while intensifying the pressure, as if baiting them into bigger risks.
  • (13) His maternal grandfather was the amiably colourful mayor of Boston, John Francis Fitzgerald, the child of immigrants and the first Irish Catholic to achieve such power in the then-English – or "Boston Brahmin" – dominated-political landscape of New England.
  • (14) (Las Vegas's current mayor, the amiably savvy Oscar Goodman, made his reputation as a lawyer defending mobsters.)
  • (15) Only in much later life did his fondness for the place grow as he became an occasional and amiable visitor to it.
  • (16) In one penalty area, Richard Dunne and Thierry Henry sit chatting in what seems genuinely like a very amiable fashion.
  • (17) In an alternate reading, the snarl-up was not designed to punish the amiable Sokolich but New Jersey senate leader Loretta Weinberg, whose district is in Fort Lee, because she blocked Christie's supreme court nominees.
  • (18) The critical course of the terminal phases of the cancer-patient needs a cautious and amiable attendment.
  • (19) GCHQ, he says, is seen as "a club of amiable gentlemen in shabby tweed jackets," probably still fighting the Nazis.
  • (20) "It was a very … interesting time," he says amiably, with the benefit of 14 years' reflection.