What's the difference between agony and anguish?

Agony


Definition:

  • (n.) Violent contest or striving.
  • (n.) Pain so extreme as to cause writhing or contortions of the body, similar to those made in the athletic contests in Greece; and hence, extreme pain of mind or body; anguish; paroxysm of grief; specifically, the sufferings of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane.
  • (n.) Paroxysm of joy; keen emotion.
  • (n.) The last struggle of life; death struggle.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "The new feminine ideal is of egg-smooth perfection from hairline to toes," she writes, describing the exquisite agony of having her fingers, arms, back, buttocks and nostrils waxed.
  • (2) It has been awfully hard-won, carved slowly out of a big block of human agony.
  • (3) Her agony and her rapture stay interior, and they flip-flop like nerves in this beautiful, grave black-and-white movie.
  • (4) Those who remember the Two Davids of the 1987 SDP-Liberal Alliance will recall the exquisite agony only too well, cruelly captured by the Spitting Image puppet of little Steel perched in big Owen's pocket.
  • (5) Using male and female Wistar rats, pituitary response to cardiac and respiratory failure type (CFT and RFT) sudden death caused by the intravenous administration of KC1 and SCC, respectively, was examined by analyzing variation in pituitary immunoreactive beta-endorphin (IR-beta-EP) levels determined by radioimmunoassay after death and in circulating IR-beta-EP levels during periods of agony.
  • (6) I was in the surgical ward at Westmorland General Hospital on Kendal Green, and it was agony.
  • (7) I'd go after work and he'd paint till 1 or 1.30 in the morning, and it was agony lying there on the floor.
  • (8) Evidently fuelled by the agony of losing a series twelve months ago when the trophy was almost within their grasp, they also had the teamwork, technique and experience to turn their quest for revenge into a reality.
  • (9) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Even those who’ve never seen a downhill ski race couldn’t help but sympathise with Bode Miller’s agony at missing out on a medal in what will surely be the last Olympic event of his career.
  • (10) "When the disaster was big enough," King writes, "agony and violent death had an enriching quality."
  • (11) Even at UCH, when no one was there for us and my father, having not slept for almost 30 hours, was pulling his hair out in agony, I tried to look at it all as a kind of comedy of errors."
  • (12) They were subject, of course, to the prison censor, but the agony over Winnie, and the passion of which that agony was a product, blazes through them.
  • (13) That he ended up in the dock in The Hague at all surprised many who have studied the man and his country's agony through the 1990s.
  • (14) Shawcross, however, maintains there was no bad intent and said for that reason he has not been tormenting himself about the moment he collided with Ramsey's right leg and left the teenager writhing in agony.
  • (15) He notes the uneven agony - 80% will land in developing countries.
  • (16) The poor animals are thrown back into the water to die in agony, a practice condemned by environmental campaigners.
  • (17) The rest was pure agony for the Australians, give or take a yellow card for Sonny Bill Williams, given for a dangerous tackle.
  • (18) The woman before you in agony pushing and pushing, losing all dignity, does not care one bit whether I am feeling alarmed at her screaming, worried about where I should be standing, wondering whether I should rub her back or try and make small talk between contractions.
  • (19) Litvinenko sipped “three or four times” from a cup of radioactive tea, and died in agony 23 days later, the inquiry heard last week.
  • (20) Our most excruciating agony is of not being noticed in the world.

Anguish


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To distress with extreme pain or grief.
  • (n.) Extreme pain, either of body or mind; excruciating distress.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This dilemma is at the heart of many people's anguished indecision over the wisdom of our action in Iraq.
  • (2) British MPs are deceiving themselves if they believe they do not bear some of the responsibility for the “terrible tragedy” unfolding in Syria, the former chancellor, George Osborne, said on Tuesday during an often anguished emergency debate in the House of Commons on the carnage being inflicted in eastern Aleppo.
  • (3) Infertility is, in all its forms, a most private, hidden anguish.
  • (4) Downing street – aware of the anguish of the families of these unconfirmed Britons – has privately expressed frustration at the cumbersome process of identification of the bodies following the killings last Friday.
  • (5) She said: "There has been a huge amount of anguish and endless discussion of what more could have been done to save this boy.
  • (6) As shown in an eponymous fly-on-the-wall documentary released earlier this year, Weiner refused to bow out of the race despite the anguish of his staff and Abedin, who often looked on in silence as her husband attempted to extricate himself from the scandal.
  • (7) The method to overcome the resistance to dental attention due to anguish is to establish a good relation-ship between the dentist and the patient, a good management of the ambivalent feeling of the child and the elimination of the phenomenon of transference.
  • (8) Some gifted and canny writers have made a mint by appealing to teenagers’ sense of anguish and victimhood, the notion that they are forever embattled and persecuted by a rotten world run by authoritarian bozos.
  • (9) A phenomenological approach permits to confirm the intuition of language in showing that the living experience of anguish is different from the one of anxiety.
  • (10) The anguish families experience when they are asked to make health care decisions for incompetent members has stimulated the search for adequate prior directives.
  • (11) It is a bizarre, fascinating, crazily over-the-top piece of self-portraiture which verges on self-vivisection, culminating in Kim's cracked performance of "Arirang", a Korean folk-song replete with anguish.
  • (12) This man’s anguish and his love for his children pour out of your image and it is [a] look that I saw in the faces of countless people as we took them from the boats.” Working on deadline, I lost track of the family.
  • (13) He spoke out after a survey of 23,000 women's views of their birth experience with the NHS revealed significant dissatisfaction, and sometimes anger and anguish.
  • (14) In my experience as a GP, I have learned that many people feel embarrassed and ashamed in telling a doctor about their mental anguish.
  • (15) EPA Gazza’s Italia 90 tears were but a trickling tributary compared with the Amazon of anguish unleashed by the shell-shocked hosts during their mortifying 7-1 loss to Germany.
  • (16) But Brief Encounter has survived such threats, because it is so well made, because Laura's voiceover narration is truly anguished and dreamy, because the music suckers all of us, and because Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard are perfect.
  • (17) Admission to a critical care unit often causes a great deal of distress and anguish, not only for the patient but also his or her family.
  • (18) It was hinted at this week by Adam Posen , retiring member of the Bank's monetary policy committee, in criticising his colleagues for their "anguished religious ethics" over quantitative easing.
  • (19) Yet the Brazilians who were photographed unleashing their sorrow on a cloudy, darkening evening, in scenes of anguish from Estádio Mineirão to Copacabana beach, were not mourning a massacre, atrocity or anything else that might seem to justify such infinite sadness.
  • (20) "I know these measures are very tough … I am acutely aware of the hardship and the anguish such sacrifices have caused for Greeks," said Venizelos, adding that the measures would save the state €6.5bn – the equivalent of 3% of GDP.