What's the difference between anguish and torment?

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.

Torment


Definition:

  • (n.) An engine for casting stones.
  • (n.) Extreme pain; anguish; torture; the utmost degree of misery, either of body or mind.
  • (n.) That which gives pain, vexation, or misery.
  • (v. t.) To put to extreme pain or anguish; to inflict excruciating misery upon, either of body or mind; to torture.
  • (v. t.) To pain; to distress; to afflict.
  • (v. t.) To tease; to vex; to harass; as, to be tormented with importunities, or with petty annoyances.
  • (v. t.) To put into great agitation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Her story is an incredible tale of triumph over tragedy: a tormented childhood during China's Cultural Revolution, detention and forced exile after exposing female infanticide – then glittering success as the head of a major US technology firm.
  • (2) "It is difficult to imagine the torment experienced by the vulnerable victims of crimes such as these.
  • (3) While his citizens were being beaten and tormented in illegal detention, spokesmen for the then prime minister, Tony Blair, declared: "The Italian police had a difficult job to do.
  • (4) Yet the removal of two in-form goalscorers who were tormenting West Ham – first Aaron Lennon and then Lukaku – afforded the visitors the initiative.
  • (5) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
  • (6) Corner to USA though... 1.33am BST 20 mins More tempo in the American play now, but Belgium intercept again, and Mirallas torments them down the Belgian right flank before hitting a low cross in that's hoofed safely clear.
  • (7) It cannot be right that anyone who has found the courage to escape their abusive or violent partner should be subjected to the stress and torment of being confronted and interrogated by them in any court.” Research by charity Women’s Aid suggests a quarter of women in family court proceedings have been cross-examined by an abusive former partner.
  • (8) Shin Dong-hyuk said he was tormented to see his father alive and speaking in the video released by Pyongyang in October.
  • (9) In a torment of frustration, Mohammed stood outside the governor's and threw a can of petrol over himself.
  • (10) More than a quarter of hospital beds are occupied by people with dementia (no surprise to anyone who has been in hospital recently, where wards are full of men and women in great anxiety and torment) and they tend to stay for longer-than-average periods of time.
  • (11) Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island whose bipartisan bill will ensure a three-month extension of the federal benefits program, told the Guardian the measure would stimulate the economy and alleviate what he called the “mental torment” suffered by those long-term unemployed who now feel abandoned.
  • (12) It was only his inflexible determination, the quality that had made him a great general, that mastered the torments of ill-health – sleepless nights, fear of dying – to articulate his account for a devoted American audience.
  • (13) The man who devised these torments has a passing resemblance to El Greco's emaciated saints.
  • (14) Arsenal had no riposte to the blue and white striped waves that tormented them all evening.
  • (15) Father Michael, so brilliantly played by Sean Bean , was tormented by one such moment: his decision not to answer the phone to Helen Oyenusi (Muna Otaru) when she called to ask that he calm down her son.
  • (16) Suárez played as through affronted by the suggestion he might have fitness issues, tormenting England’s defence on a night that finished as a personal ordeal for Steven Gerrard.
  • (17) So often did John torment his elder brother – because, grouchy alcoholic prick that he was, he hated to acknowledge a debt – one has to wonder if he cast Francis in a minor part in Young Mr Lincoln simply to let him witness, day after day, his own signature role being forever obliterated by Henry Fonda's entrancing new reading.
  • (18) 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.
  • (19) Since his withdrawal from the music scene, Shields has earned a reputation as the latter-day Brian Wilson, a tormented genius unable to produce a successor to Loveless, the Pet Sounds of UK avant-rock.
  • (20) Adding to the torment for Rodgers was a 120-minute performance before hosting Manchester City in the Premier League on Sunday at noon.