What's the difference between anguish and vex?

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.

Vex


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To to/s back and forth; to agitate; to disquiet.
  • (v. t.) To make angry or annoyed by little provocations; to irritate; to plague; to torment; to harass; to afflict; to trouble; to tease.
  • (v. t.) To twist; to weave.
  • (v. i.) To be irritated; to fret.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) De Boer's successor's first tasks will be to keep the US aboard the negotiations and to clear up the vexed question of the legal status of the Copenhagen accord , the deal struck at Copenhagen by a small group but not endorsed by a majority of countries.
  • (2) There is also the vexed question of what should be the legal form of any Paris agreement, a subject likely to keep negotiators up late into the night at the conference, and some anxiety among the hosts over whether the text of a deal can be formulated in due time.
  • (3) But the bigger question, the one that has vexed historians, biographers and holocaust experts for eight decades, is why she was there.
  • (4) Cs (2 mM) reduced diastolic depolarization (DD) at different [Ca]O and in 10.8 mM [Ca]O revealed an oscillatory potential (VOS) and the decay of a prolonged depolarization (Vex).
  • (5) The past few days have been vexing ones for reporting guidelines, voluntary or legal.
  • (6) The present data also highlighted the vexed relationship between stress and seizure control, which needs to be further investigated.
  • (7) Another vexed national question in the coming months will be this one: who is the most worthy winner of BBC Sports Personality of the Year?
  • (8) Delivery of monoclonal antibodies to solid tumors is a vexing problem that must be solved if these antibodies are to realize their promise in therapy.
  • (9) Pathologists without considerable experience in the diagnosis of bone tumors find this question especially vexing.
  • (10) Caffeine (5 mM) abolishes Vos and Ios and increases Vex and Iex (as DOXO does), and adding DOXO slightly increased Vex and Iex.
  • (11) Posttraumatic joint stiffness is particularly vexing in the small joints.
  • (12) In this spirit, a vignette is offered from a clinical area in which questions of "health" and "illness" are particularly vexing at present.
  • (13) Some might argue that our eyes weren't quite on the ball back in '89: never mind the cataclysmic political upheaval in eastern Europe – the results of which still echo around the world – let's devote ourselves to a page concerned with vexed questions such as: why is water wet?
  • (14) The draft provides scant details on the vexed subject of accountability for emission reduction programmes.
  • (15) Nowhere was the commission’s balancing act more finely weighted than on the vexed question of bioenergy, which Cañete admitted was “a clear problem”.
  • (16) The top Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, said there was also a possibility of advances on the vexed issued of transparency – how to monitor, report and verify each nation's emissions to ensure they are honouring their pledges.
  • (17) But now it’s Isis who are the insurgents,” leaving the peshmerga with the vexing challenge of defending and holding territory.
  • (18) On the vexed issue of longer term finance, the Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi presented an offer to reduce developing country demands by 75% to $100bn a year from 2020, in return for guarantees of how the money would be distributed.
  • (19) Discussed here are some contours of the vexing problem of adequate minority participation in the health professions and a brief discussion of some programs that appear to be working.
  • (20) After the creed and some Benjamin Britten, and a blessing and a long round of applause, the man charged with holding together the fractious global Anglican communion as it struggles with the vexed issues of women bishops and same-sex marriage processed out of the cathedral and into the bitterly cold spring afternoon.