What's the difference between anguish and heartrending?

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.

Heartrending


Definition:

  • (a.) Causing intense grief; overpowering with anguish; very distressing.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "That is a heartrending song," says Guardian music writer Alexis Petridis.
  • (2) It was a fraction of the usual price – $6,000 a person – but even for Nogales, a gritty Mexican border city filled with hard luck stories, the Guatemalan couple’s plight was heartrending.
  • (3) 'Maybe I'm just like my father, too bold,' he sang memorably in the heartrending 'When Doves Cry'.
  • (4) A broad range of delegates were ineffably moved by Hu's speech, which contained heartrending lines such as "the scientific outlook on development is the theoretical guidance the party must adhere to for a long time".
  • (5) Val McDermid Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian The late, great Michael Marra , the Bard of Dundee, once wrote a heartrending and witty song called "Beefheart and Bones" about a couple divvying up their CD collection after a breakup.
  • (6) The visual results in some cases have been gratifying and in others heartrending.
  • (7) It is packed with striking statistics and heartrending stories, in the words of people being put through this inhuman and degrading assessment.
  • (8) She was collaborating at the time, with superb recklessness – or courage – on a book, Andrew Morton’s Diana: Her True Story , which sprung on an unsuspecting nation and its ruling family a heartrending tale of her misery and betrayal at the hands of Prince Charles.
  • (9) The fact that he is, only makes him more heartrending.

Words possibly related to "heartrending"