What's the difference between awe and epiphany?

Awe


Definition:

  • (n.) Dread; great fear mingled with respect.
  • (n.) The emotion inspired by something dreadful and sublime; an undefined sense of the dreadful and the sublime; reverential fear, or solemn wonder; profound reverence.
  • (v. t.) To strike with fear and reverence; to inspire with awe; to control by inspiring dread.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "I wanted it to have a romantic feel," says Wilson, "recalling Donald Campbell and his Bluebird machines and that spirit of awe-inspiring adventure."
  • (2) I have had the awe-inducing pleasure of standing alone among the giant trees, both sequoias and redwoods, and hearing nothing but the chatter of the squirrels and the high wind in the tallest branches.
  • (3) Let’s leave that discussion to another day, but imagine a combination of the two – sort of Transformers meets Ex Machina – in which a race of giant sexy robots battles it out with another race of really mean giant sexy robots while paltry human beings look on in awe, and teenage boys (and girls) experience incredibly conflicting and disturbing sensual awakenings in the front row of the Beckenham Odeon.
  • (4) But as a professional engineer, Alwash admits to having been in awe at what Saddam's men had done.
  • (5) An activist has discipline, goals and strategy.” Amy K. Nelson (@AmyKNelson) Amazing scene here at QuickTrip: exiled Tibetan monks here & people are in awe, hugging them, wanting photos.
  • (6) From where he stood, the Real Madrid coach watched in awe as barely metres away Gareth Bale started the sprint that ended with him scoring what he admitted was the "biggest" goal of his career: a 50-metre gallop that won the Copa del Rey for Real Madrid .
  • (7) The world is in awe of China’s relentless capacity to produce gargantuan cities, each outdoing the most recent superlative that describes its predecessor.
  • (8) He’s sensitive, intelligent, rather awe-inspiring and slightly frightening, but he is a real person, you can get really involved in him.
  • (9) One day they hope to recreate a full-size, ocean-going replica Roskilde 6, and send it across the sea to awe rather than to terrorise the coasts of the British Isles.
  • (10) Are we fighting for a better understanding of what is going on in our sport or are we trying to get power?’” Saddique Shaban (@SaddiqueShaban) No let up in Kenyan athletes siege at Roadha House as besieged officials watch in awe.
  • (11) But it was awe-inspiring to watch Rivers try: she had the stamina of someone (several someones) a fraction of her age.
  • (12) Of course a father looking at the ultrasound image of his gestating, 20-week-old daughters is going to feel love and awe and the majesty of life, and deeply feel that those are his babies and that they are people.
  • (13) Despite pressure from leaders in Europe and across the world – from David Cameron to Barack Obama – the ECB has resisted calls for a "shock and awe" intervention in the bond markets to support countries such as Italy and Spain, which have seen their borrowing costs soar in the past two weeks.
  • (14) A surgical intervention is dangerous for the old patient awing to the reduced reactiveness and polymorbity.
  • (15) Malton says she is "in awe" of how he goes about the work.
  • (16) The right has spent almost every moment of the last six years painting leftists as people gazing in blissful awe at Obama.
  • (17) When Spielberg asked him to design the mothership for the climax of Close Encounters, the artist drew on a dream from years earlier, in which he had seen an awe-inspiring spacecraft with pipes and stairways jutting out from its underside.
  • (18) He liked the band, and we gave him $10,000, which was probably a big influence.” Their second (far more unlikely) collaboration with P-Funk main man Clinton was such a success that the mere mention of his name sends the band into a love-glow of awe.
  • (19) Only a rare few have accomplished this noble journey and can attest to the feeling of awe that accompanies such a moment in one’s life.
  • (20) Yet in the face of the country’s political and media establishment warning Greeks to vote yes – echoing every major European leader (and quite a few faceless ones) – and the shock-and-awe tactics of the European Central Bank in pulling the plug on Greek banks , the country still delivered a loud no to austerity, troika-style.

Epiphany


Definition:

  • (n.) An appearance, or a becoming manifest.
  • (n.) A church festival celebrated on the 6th of January, the twelfth day after Christmas, in commemoration of the visit of the Magi of the East to Bethlehem, to see and worship the child Jesus; or, as others maintain, to commemorate the appearance of the star to the Magi, symbolizing the manifestation of Christ to the Gentles; Twelfthtide.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Photograph: Warner Bros His first epiphany came during a high school version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel in the high school auditorium before 1,500 people.
  • (2) If it felt like an epiphany for Benn, it was more like a Sermon on the Mount to his Labour colleagues.
  • (3) In the film, Gould says that he knows he cannot beat death; indeed, his acceptance of its approach is at the root of his epiphany.
  • (4) For Demirtaş, the Diyarbakir killings were an epiphany of the kind that hundreds of thousands of Kurds have experienced over the past 40 years – generally in response to a government atrocity.
  • (5) I don't know of any recent astronauts who've had an epiphany based on space travel."
  • (6) But as my adult-onset acne continued to get worse and worse – and more resistant to medication – I had an epiphany.
  • (7) Talking with Hebden as he chats about making music, or the feeling in the room as he DJed that final night of Plastic People, you notice how he describes his life as a series of little epiphanies.
  • (8) Osborne gets lost In an interview with the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Kath Viner, George Osborne admitted to an unusual epiphany on getting to know the north.
  • (9) Late, late has been their epiphany, but still too late for this year.
  • (10) This professional epiphany was mirrored by a challenge to his family life when his son Kai (Markram has five children from two marriages) was diagnosed with Asperger's, an autism spectrum disorder.
  • (11) The capacity to inspire epiphany in others is a life-changing gift.
  • (12) His explanation for the leap is that he had an epiphany when he was in his last year of Stanford, when one of his younger brothers came out as gay.
  • (13) When I was 56 we went to New England on holiday and I had an epiphany.
  • (14) I had at least two life epiphanies during Where Dreams Go to Die, which contains maybe my favourite lyric of all time: “I regret the day your ugly carcass caught my eye”.
  • (15) Were it not for the PKK, which Öcalan launched with the murder of two Turkish soldiers in 1984, it is possible that the forced assimilation of the Kurds into mainstream Turkish society would have advanced much further, and the epiphanies of Demirtaş and others may not have happened.
  • (16) Making commitments now risks overcompensation for households and adding significantly to the cost of household assistance.” Tony Abbott's GST 'epiphany' has been a long time in the works Read more The New South Wales Coalition government led the charge for increasing the GST to help fund the shortfall in health funding, while the Victorian and Queensland Labor governments suggested the Medicare levy as a fairer alternative .
  • (17) Intriguingly, it was not the prospect of Lebedev, bearing a vast bouquet of P45s, that caused alarm in the blogosphere, but a handful of Liddle's hundreds of columns, such as a grotesque ad feminam attack in the Spectator which was, for many of us, an epiphany, the first moment we had ever felt warmly towards Harriet Harman.
  • (18) "When I saw there was a whole system of science based on genetics, of serious work in the evolutionary pattern, that was an epiphany.
  • (19) But no sign yet that the Davos set is worrying unduly: by Epiphany – 6 January – FTSE 100 chief executives had already earned more than a year of the average wage .
  • (20) T he moment that changed James Watt’s life – his beer epiphany, which he recalls with surprising (or well-rehearsed) precision – did not arrive in the most auspicious venue: “It was a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from the States, bought at Tesco’s in Stonehaven, to wash down some fish and chips.