What's the difference between amusing and droll?

Amusing


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Amuse
  • (a.) Giving amusement; diverting; as, an amusing story.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It was amusing: he's still working away and this picture of him is hanging in a gallery somewhere.
  • (2) Joaquin Rodriguez Oliver is amusing himself by trying to take a puff of a cigar in his saddle.
  • (3) Students have been amused by the amount of public response to this action.
  • (4) But she is determined to reassert her authority and appears not to have been amused by the remark.
  • (5) In La Shish, the beloved local halal restaurant where Wanda Beydoun has worked a minimum wage managing job for 16 years, these stereotypes are a source of amusement.
  • (6) In a tent for those recovering, a talkative man wearing a heavy gold chain played up to amused doctors during the lunch break.
  • (7) Israeli media reports said the rocket came down near an amusement park in sand dunes on the edge of the city.
  • (8) He tells an amusing story of how exhilarated, if stunned, he was by completing three skeleton runs at Lillehammer.
  • (9) Tech entrepreneurs will keep expanding into increasingly diverse niches, so it will be amusing to try and pick out the most obscure market being disrupted in 2014.
  • (10) King notes with some amusement that he has been around so long that kids who read and loved him in the 1970s now run publishing houses and newspapers; he is revered, these days, as a grand old man of American letters.
  • (11) She added that the superstore would have pulled business from the local high street and brought big lorries and heavy traffic to the site which sits next to Dreamland, Margate’s derelict amusement park which is being revived.
  • (12) But my amusement should be a problem for movement conservatism.
  • (13) Facebook Twitter Pinterest We are most amused … The Windsors, starring Harry Enfield and Hadyn Gwynne, centre.
  • (14) In Brussels, the reaction was more bemusement than amusement.
  • (15) It’s something that has always baffled and amused me about my grandmother.
  • (16) It amuses me that he calls his new material "songs" when they are so unsingable.
  • (17) The joke, the uncontainable amusement, the gleeful satisfaction, was that most rational people had thought that he was too disabled to walk 26 miles, that he was too sick.
  • (18) The tribunal ruled: "The comment having been made, other people in the room, including other supervisors, laughing and finding it amusing, was inevitably conduct that any gay police officer would reasonably consider … degrading."
  • (19) "The part in the film is small, I thought it would be amusing.
  • (20) Now tell us this, Robbie, when you collected your MBE from the queen, did you exchange amusing chitchat with the woman who most of us only ever encounter on stamps?

Droll


Definition:

  • (superl.) Queer, and fitted to provoke laughter; ludicrous from oddity; amusing and strange.
  • (n.) One whose practice it is to raise mirth by odd tricks; a jester; a buffoon; a merry-andrew.
  • (n.) Something exhibited to raise mirth or sport, as a puppet, a farce, and the like.
  • (v. i.) To jest; to play the buffoon.
  • (v. t.) To lead or influence by jest or trick; to banter or jest; to cajole.
  • (v. t.) To make a jest of; to set in a comical light.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "It's like revisiting an old world," says Topley-Bird, who is droll and spacey where Tricky is hyperactively chatty.
  • (2) Obama's roommates were Paul Carpenter, a blond southern Californian who occasionally took his friends surfing (bodysurfing, in Barry's case), and Imad Husain, an intellectual Pakistani with a droll sense of humour who grew up in Karachi (though his parents now lived in Dubai) and finished his secondary education at Bedford School in the UK.
  • (3) She is by far the most popular …" Ms Harman was careful not to smile at this gallant jibe, but most of the shadow cabinet thought it very droll and smiled happily.
  • (4) Patterson says that she felt the most sympathy for her father, quietly droll, music-loving, a former Japanese POW.
  • (5) Tom was unsuited to the home-improvement periodicals for which he wrote in the late 70s, but in 1980 his droll and quizzical reviews began to appear in New Music News, an underground rock weekly launched by Felix Dennis to fill the vacuum left by the strike-bound NME and Melody Maker.
  • (6) She is the drama's underdog, but Lindqvist's droll, bullish performance elicits the most memorable moments of humour and pathos (as well as several uncomfortable moments in that bikini).
  • (7) His show was loose and disconnected, delivered in a droll, semi-stoned style that allowed him to ramble gently from one topic to the next.
  • (8) Here he reviews games with droll and super-fast wit, against a backdrop of animation.
  • (9) What happened to the droll and down-to-earth candidate who, without a qualm, is now embracing the Bonapartist style of Charles de Gaulle's presidency?
  • (10) Fuck it.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Droll model: comedian Michael Che.
  • (11) "He was like, 'I've thrown parents in the pool before, don't make me throw you,'" says Tony, adopting a hangdog look and mimicking Murray in the lowest, most droll voice possible.
  • (12) Most of all, I will miss his style: his suave deportment; his droll sense of humour; his understatement and his physical energy; his articulacy; his charm; his grace.
  • (13) It's been significantly updated – the stand-out moment for me was when Beryl and Betty did a rap over Don't Stop Me Now (they do the words – "I'm a sex machine, ready to reload", which is droll for their dry delivery – but they also chat all the way through: "I think you were out of tune, there".
  • (14) In a presentation so droll that the people who came after him kicked off with "We're not going to be as enjoyable as that, I'm afraid", Haslam emphasised activity, more activity, sustainable activity – best of all, routine activity, that is built into your life and carries on regardless of the weather, or whether you've broken your arm.
  • (15) 1 Know thine enemy It is droll to observe nutritional advice at the public health level; governments and their agencies always approach obesity as though it were a problem of information or – in the popular phrasing – "awareness".
  • (16) Friday's launch was fun (cue Zuckerberg's droll status update: "Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on Nasdaq") but there's a tendency to see stock market flotations as the culmination of a company's existence.
  • (17) Every morning, he announces the location of each piece on his website and invites people to call a hotline for droll descriptions of the artwork's inspiration.
  • (18) Tristram is quite droll about the demands of the narrative, and describes the distance it puts between her and the disease as a kind of relief.
  • (19) His LinkedIn account is also testament to a droll sense of humour with a minimal CV.
  • (20) All very droll – but perhaps the self-proclaimed "cock of the walk" might like to think about letting the dust settle?