What's the difference between asunder and riven?

Asunder


Definition:

  • (adv.) Apart; separate from each other; into parts; in two; separately; into or in different pieces or places.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) So here we are in Chester's Mill, a snoozy Maine town about to be rent asunder by the arrival of a mysterious transparent dome, shooming down like a giant jam jar on its coffee shops and car lots and effectively cutting its residents off from the rest of civilisation.
  • (2) The players' revolt which split tennis asunder, shrivelled 1973's Wimbledon championships to a half-baked botch and kick-started a dramatic overturn in the century-long balance of power between the administrators and administered of any major worldwide sport, was triggered because a temperamental and reasonably good Yugoslavian player, Nikki Pilic, decided to play a well-paid doubles tournament in Montreal instead of (for a pittance) a Davis Cup tie for his country against New Zealand.
  • (3) Families were torn asunder, and fathers and sons ended up on opposing sides.
  • (4) Thursday’s Sleaford by-election only confirmed the fact that progressive politics is being rent asunder by a growing divide between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas – and post-Brexit Labour, like Clinton’s Democrats, doesn’t have the language or politics to speak to rural, small-town England.
  • (5) Photograph: Penny Bradfield Julia Gillard leaves the press conference Photograph: Penny Bradfield Updated at 10.01am GMT 9.09am GMT Lenore Taylor on a "speck of silver lining for Labor" Guardian Australia’s incoming political editor Lenore Taylor writes for Fairfax media that Labor’s political dysfunction has reached levels unprecedented “even for a party that has spent much of the last three years tearing itself asunder”.
  • (6) As the lowest ranked of the World Cup finalists (at 62), Australia was expected to get torn asunder by an attack-minded Chile, and for the first 16 minutes —during which Chile scored twice— it was all going according to the pessimists’ script.
  • (7) Or perhaps, in expressionist black-and-white, the opening tableau of Great Expectations: wind blowing Dickens's pages asunder, then a dissolve to some ghostly Thames marshes straight out of a monster movie.
  • (8) They're getting rent asunder here, losing a World Cup semi-final 5-0in their own manner.
  • (9) In my book Realisation I’ve shown how our world view morphed from a body into a tree into a pyramid, then an altar and lastly a veil until science tore them all asunder.
  • (10) Their hearts won’t be wrenched asunder by baking tragedy, encapsulated by a lingering shot of some lumpy petits fours and ultimately soothed by plinky lullaby music and incidental twee.
  • (11) We are asunder, a predicament perhaps best expressed by the Daily Mail's Robert Hardman being photographed in a cathedral calling people "godless".
  • (12) Thus, the SNP is “divisive”; the referendum is “divisive”; families are “divided”; communities are “rent asunder” by “divisiveness”.
  • (13) Credlin has been by the prime minister’s side from almost the moment he took over the leadership of a Coalition split asunder and demoralised after its internal ructions over support for the Rudd government’s carbon price.
  • (14) One ever feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” This concept of African American duality is – writes Henry Louis Gates Jr – Du Bois’s “most important gift to the black literary tradition”.
  • (15) The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats joined the chorus, warning that if pro-union forces did not adopt a "sunshine strategy", and sharpish, there was a "distinct possibility" Scots would vote yes and three centuries of union would be torn asunder – a conscious uncoupling if ever there were one.
  • (16) Milan countered as Liverpool appealed for a spot-kic and the red defence was rent asunder by Andriy Shevchenko, who eschewed an opportunity to shoot from a narrow angle.
  • (17) In less than six months Chu has transformed the US energy department from being driven by oil interests asunder President Bush's administration, to one which is now turning dramatically to renewable energy.
  • (18) Setting out his concerns about a Labour party dependent on SNP support, he said: “The SNP has one sole mission in life and that is to pull the UK asunder and to take Scotland out of the UK.
  • (19) The Church of Scotland among others has already expressed concern at the prospect of bitterness and resentment cleaving Scotland asunder following a heated and emotional referendum campaign.
  • (20) In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed and children scarred.

Riven


Definition:

  • () of Rive
  • () p. p. & a. from Rive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It has become clear that our diverse minorities are themselves diverse, often riven with internal conflict, with segments committed to political projects that are abhorrent to others both within and without those groupings.
  • (2) The council offered him a tea urn | Frances Ryan Read more Government attempts to decrease the disproportionately high levels of unemployment among disabled people have had little impact, the report notes, while notorious “fit-for-work” tests were riven with flaws.
  • (3) Bridging the Muslim-Christian divide and climate issues are major themes of the trip that also takes him to Uganda, which like Kenya has been a victim of extremist attacks, and the Central African Republic, a nation riven by sectarian conflict.
  • (4) But whereas the earlier book was set in a nameless African state, here the location is explicitly South Africa, where revolution has driven a white, liberal family out of Johannesburg into the protection of their servant, July, in a small village riven with its own conflicts which is none too happy to shelter them.
  • (5) The aim of fostering solidarity and forging common values across a continent that has so often been riven with conflict is an inspiring and uplifting one: count me in.
  • (6) Kiir’s SPLM is reportedly riven by infighting – a leadership convention at the weekend was postponed indefinitely at the last minute.
  • (7) The left has lost eight byelections for parliamentary seats and three local byelections in the last 12 months, while the rightwing UMP has been riven by its very public power struggles.
  • (8) Improving our tax collection would allow artisanal mining to boost local development.” Whether it's Mexico's gold or Zimbabwe's diamonds, mining is riven with violence and business is complicit Read more Anor is also working on setting up a national gold refinery that will be responsible for certifying and hallmarking gold for export.
  • (9) Libya , which has been riven by instability since the overthrow of Gaddafi, has had rival administrations since August 2014, when an alliance of Islamist-backed militias overran the capital, Tripoli, forcing the government to take refuge in the east.
  • (10) Transporting heavy building materials across dirt streets riven with gullies and piled high with detritus is not easy, and theft of building materials is commonplace in Kibera.
  • (11) No: the clear winner in this elite-loathing, privilege-hating, populism-riven island is surely the quiet billionaire: Jonathan Harold Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere , who emerges ever more obviously as the very antithesis of Lord C. He runs a successful, increasingly diversified business empire.
  • (12) The political establishment is riven by deep divisions, principally between economic reformers loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and clerical arch-conservatives backed by the Revolutionary Guards and a wealthy, corrupt merchant class that has grown fat on the 1979 revolution.
  • (13) A scathing report into the BBC's handling of a shelved Newsnight exposé of Jimmy Savile revealed a culture of "suspicion and mistrust" at the corporation, riven by factions and in-fighting with "rigid management chains" that rendered it "completely incapable" of dealing with the scandal when it was exposed.
  • (14) But all were fiercely antagonistic during the election campaign and the new government looks riven with rivalries and disagreements.
  • (15) A former pine and hazel forest felled by stone age man, the Burren is a limestone desert riven by deep fissures and cracks in which tiny plants thrive.
  • (16) Contemplating an EU riven by currency crises, humiliated by Russia in Ukraine and Syria, and bitterly divided over migration policy, he now has even less cause to seek favour.
  • (17) In conflict-riven Somalia, for example, fierce unregulated competition has made mobiles affordable and prevalent, whereas internet penetration stands at 1.14% of the population.
  • (18) He used to be the speccy ginger herbert from Warrington riding his luck – always on the pull, forever on the lash, rarely riven by self-doubt.
  • (19) The book described Charles’s court as so riven by infighting that it is known by insiders as “Wolf Hall”, after Hilary Mantel’s fictional portrayal of Thomas Cromwell’s devious machinations on behalf of King Henry VIII.
  • (20) The BBC may be mired in scandal and riven by internal mistrust, but it could take a crumb of comfort from not being the only state broadcaster making headlines for the wrong reasons.