What's the difference between agony and torture?

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.

Torture


Definition:

  • (n.) Extreme pain; anguish of body or mind; pang; agony; torment; as, torture of mind.
  • (n.) Especially, severe pain inflicted judicially, either as punishment for a crime, or for the purpose of extorting a confession from an accused person, as by water or fire, by the boot or thumbkin, or by the rack or wheel.
  • (n.) The act or process of torturing.
  • (v. t.) To put to torture; to pain extremely; to harass; to vex.
  • (v. t.) To punish with torture; to put to the rack; as, to torture an accused person.
  • (v. t.) To wrest from the proper meaning; to distort.
  • (v. t.) To keep on the stretch, as a bow.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The denial of justice to victims of British torture, some of which Britain admits, is set to continue.
  • (2) Hayden had argued that the harsher interrogation techniques had provided valuable information and said that the techniques did not amount to torture.
  • (3) The court hearing – in a case of the kind likely to be heard in secret if the government's justice and security bill is passed – was requested by the law firm Leigh Day and the legal charity Reprieve, acting for Serdar Mohammed, tortured by the Afghan security services after being transferred to their custody by UK forces.
  • (4) "Consider this, all six or so hours of his Champions League finals would have been torture."
  • (5) Lastly, sexually tortured women manifest greater psychological and sexual dysfunction.
  • (6) The government also faced considerable international political pressure, with the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, calling publicly on the government to "provide full redress to the victims, including fair and adequate compensation", and writing privately to David Cameron, along with two former special rapporteurs, to warn that the government's position was undermining its moral authority across the world.
  • (7) And it means the Foreign Office dealing with those in the Middle East and North Africa who are on the side of democracy and human rights, not sitting down to tea with torturers.
  • (8) In a 2012 study submitted to the UN, the Petersburg-based centre alleged that Roma and migrants were routinely subjected to police torture .
  • (9) His torturous journey for a safer life has led to no life .
  • (10) The day it opened in the US, three senators – senate select committee on intelligence chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin and John McCain – released a letter of protest to Sony Pictures's CEO, citing their committee's 6,000-page classified report on interrogation tactics and calling on him "to state that the role of torture in the hunt for Osama bin Laden is not based on the facts, but rather part of the film's fictional narrative".
  • (11) But under his government the security forces killed more than 2,000 people, and an estimated 25,000 people were detained without trial and often tortured.
  • (12) Limits are a relief, because they concentrate the drama and free the writer from the torture of choice, as Aristotle knew when he advised playwrights to preserve "the unities" by telling one story in one place over a single day.
  • (13) Sometimes the way the MP [military policeman] holds the head chokes me, and with all the nerves in the nose the tube passing the nose is like torture,” Dhiab said in a legal filing.
  • (14) Diego Garcia guards its secrets even as the truth on CIA torture emerges Read more The long-awaited decision – expected to cause enormous disappointment – follows more than 40 years of campaigning, court cases and calls for the UK to right a wrong committed by Harold Wilson’s Labour government.
  • (15) In his letter Abd El Fattah highlights the arbitrary nature of many of their detentions, the torture to which thousands have probably been subjected – and the apathy towards, and often enthusiasm for, such malpractice among the public.
  • (16) The consequences for Syria have been multiple massacres, ethnic cleansing, torture, a humanitarian crisis and the risk of the country's breakup.
  • (17) While ruling that there had been improper use of Schedule 7 powers, the judge commented: "It was clear that the Security Service, for entirely understandable reasons, was anxious if possible to get information which could not be regarded as tainted by torture allegations or which might confirm the propriety of a control order."
  • (18) All the personality, dignity and humanity of a person are devastated by this torture.
  • (19) You had to let it crash over you.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Miles’s life was torture’ … Lu Spinney at home.
  • (20) Davis said he would be surprised if an incoming Conservative government did not set up an immediate inquiry into this case and others where Britain is alleged to have been involved in the secret rendering by the US of detainees to prison where they were likely to be tortured.