What's the difference between affray and altercation?

Affray


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To startle from quiet; to alarm.
  • (v. t.) To frighten; to scare; to frighten away.
  • (v. t.) The act of suddenly disturbing any one; an assault or attack.
  • (v. t.) Alarm; terror; fright.
  • (v. t.) A tumultuous assault or quarrel; a brawl; a fray.
  • (v. t.) The fighting of two or more persons, in a public place, to the terror of others.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) His charge sheet includes numerous assaults (one against a waiter who served him the wrong dish of artichokes); jail time for libelling a fellow painter, Giovanni Baglione, by posting poems around Rome accusing him of plagiarism and calling him Giovanni Coglione (“Johnny Bollocks”); affray (a police report records Caravaggio’s response when asked how he came by a wound: “I wounded myself with my own sword when I fell down these stairs.
  • (2) Within four paragraphs, Wills's "working-class accent" had mutated into a "silly accent"; by way of hammering home the Sandhurst chaps' close resemblance to what the Sun called "any bunch of lads from your neighbourhood street corner", they printed a shot of Michael Carroll, a man from Norfolk who won the lottery but is now serving nine months for affray - as if he were the typical representative of the working class.
  • (3) "The woman was pregnant, and the man was arrested for affray a few hours later.
  • (4) Eight people were arrested, of whom six were charged with offences including affray and cannabis possession.
  • (5) Of the 229 people detained as part of Operation Dulcet – the huge drive to bring lawbreakers to justice – 174 have been charged with offences including riotous assembly, affray, unlawful assembly, assault on police and criminal damage.
  • (6) Police spent millions of pounds on the case against Jacobs, who was 16 at the time of the murder and had previously been convicted of affray in 1986 for his part in the disturbances.
  • (7) Non-purposive delinquency of toxicomaniacs includes arson, affray, group delicts, agressive violence etc.
  • (8) Ruddock was charged with affray and Sinclair with criminal damage after a woman claimed that two men ripped bits off her car.
  • (9) The witness known as Rhodes Levin was jailed for 12 months for affray during the riots fater pleading guilty in June 1987.
  • (10) judge-made) power of arrest where there is a "breach of the peace", which itself is not really a crime, but can be said to occur whenever harm is actually done or is likely to be done to a person or, in his presence, to his property, or where a person is in fear of being harmed through an assault, affray, riot, unlawful assembly or other disturbance.
  • (11) Deeney, who began this season serving a prison sentence for affray, ran to his family in the stand.
  • (12) Officers detained a group in Lower Regent Street close to the junction with Waterloo Place and made arrests for affray.
  • (13) And most seriously of all, he was found guilty of assault and affray following a fight outside a branch of McDonald's in Liverpool, a conviction that led to him spending 74 days in prison in 2008.
  • (14) Last June, a few days before his 24th birthday and just a few weeks after cancer claimed his father at the age of 47, Deeney was sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment for affray following a night-club brawl in which he kicked a student in the head.
  • (15) In 1986 pleaded guilty to burglary and affray and received a 42 month sentence.
  • (16) Police said he had been arrested after allegations of assault, affray and criminal damage.
  • (17) However, the mayor became the first senior figure to raise the possibility of violence when he added: "What they can't do is, I think, use the death of an elderly person to begin riot or affray or that sort of thing.
  • (18) It was first discovered in 1988 while Jacobs was serving an eight-year term for affray.
  • (19) Three men were arrested during the game, including a 20-year-old on suspicion of affray and a 47-year-old and 18-year-old for pitch incursion.
  • (20) Despite the fact a court had found he should face not custodial sentence for his part in the 2011 affray, Chegeni faced indefinite detention because of it.

Altercation


Definition:

  • (n.) Warm contention in words; dispute carried on with heat or anger; controversy; wrangle; wordy contest.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mitchell was forced to quit his cabinet post as chief whip over claims he called officers "plebs" during an altercation in Downing Street, which he denies.
  • (2) They were there for an hour and there was definitely no 'altercation' as this person is making out.
  • (3) The Ukip leadership contender Steven Woolfe has been discharged from hospital after an altercation with a fellow MEP.
  • (4) Costa was sent off with six minutes remaining in his side’s 2-0 FA Cup defeat on Saturday after an altercation with Gareth Barry.
  • (5) Fatal traumatic thrombosis of the left internal carotid artery occurred in a 38-year-old man following minor blunt cervical trauma during an altercation.
  • (6) On the leaks to the media of the original altercation, which was passed to the Sun, and of an email describing what happened, which has become known as the official log, which was given to the Daily Telegraph, she said that because there was no evidence of payment a jury was likely to decide that it was in the public interest for the events at the Downing Street gate to be made public.
  • (7) A white man and an African American woman got into a brief altercation over politics, and officers loaded a handful of protesters into an NYPD van, placing their belongings into plastic bags one by one.
  • (8) Willing to send himself up for advertising campaigns but taking his art extremely seriously, Cantona has at times been repulsed by the media (most obviously in his post-Selhurst Park suspension phase but also in a more recent altercation with a paparazzo in north London) but also used it to his advantage.
  • (9) Madison’s police chief, Mike Koval, said at a press conference that an officer shot a 19-year-old, who he said was responsible for a recent battery, during an altercation.
  • (10) But police apparently did not even tape off the area around the altercation – a basic requirement to secure a crime scene and gather forensic evidence.
  • (11) One man who tried to stop the altercation was also punched.
  • (12) The incident was not the only altercation at the Trump campaign event on Saturday.
  • (13) Eric Holder , the US attorney general, said at a press conference in Washington: “Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of officer Wilson.” The decision ended the second half of a politically-charged investigation into Wilson’s shooting of Brown on 9 August following an altercation in a residential side-street.
  • (14) Hours earlier, Ulivarri’s son, Luís Carlos, 23, had been shot in a bar, and then dragged into the night after an altercation with a group of men presumed to be members of a local drug cartel.
  • (15) Many street disputes are not gang or even clique related, but the climate of violence created by the gangs, with their ready access to arms, means that a Hobbesian, kill-or-be-killed mentality can afflict even the most minor altercations.
  • (16) The polarisation of the club’s stands into separate areas that are almost all white and stands that are ethnically mixed proved a backdrop for violent race altercations between the club’s own fans.
  • (17) The meeting was called ostensibly to clear the air after revelations about an altercation Mitchell had had with Metropolitan police officers in Downing Street, when he was the government's chief whip.
  • (18) The altercation in Downing Street on 19 September last year took place after two police officers on duty refused to let him ride his bicycle through the gates.
  • (19) Alan Pardew denied head-butting Hull's David Meyler in a touchline altercation but conceded he would be "stupid" not to expect the Football Association to come down hard on him in the coming days.
  • (20) The officer chased the man, an altercation ensued and the man fired at the officer, the police chief said.