What's the difference between awful and frightful?

Awful


Definition:

  • (a.) Oppressing with fear or horror; appalling; terrible; as, an awful scene.
  • (a.) Inspiring awe; filling with profound reverence, or with fear and admiration; fitted to inspire reverential fear; profoundly impressive.
  • (a.) Struck or filled with awe; terror-stricken.
  • (a.) Worshipful; reverential; law-abiding.
  • (a.) Frightful; exceedingly bad; great; -- applied intensively; as, an awful bonnet; an awful boaster.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But at the same time I didn't feel like, 'Aw, I'm home!'
  • (2) It seems like an awfully long way from the ground.” He added: “When I was younger, I dreamed of being an astronaut, but I also wanted to be a policeman or a firebreather.
  • (3) EEG waves were similar during Aw and Qw but they diminished in amplitude and frequency when passing from these states to Qs, and both parameters increased during As.
  • (4) In vitro blastogenic responses of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMN) to heterogeneous schistosome-derived antigens (eggs, SEA; adult worms, AW; and cercariae, CERC) were evaluated.
  • (5) Asked whether the loss of control of the streets was embarrassing, Sir Paul replied: "Well the one thing I would say is that it must have been an awful time for the people trying to go about their daily business in those buildings.
  • (6) By contrast, storage fungi, especially Aspergillus spp., are able to grow at low water activities (aw, 0.70-0.75) enabling them to initiate grain spoilage.
  • (7) It was a bit of a nightmare … there wasn't an awful lot I could do."
  • (8) It’s very, very difficult to feel any optimism about this summit or what it will do for people looking for a safe place for them and their families right at this moment, nor tackle the awful actions of countries who are now thinking, ‘If other countries won’t help take responsibility, then why should we?’ and are now driving back desperate people.
  • (9) It has been awfully hard-won, carved slowly out of a big block of human agony.
  • (10) AW: Well, I think a rather terrific movie, actually.
  • (11) For the AW group the occurrence rate becomes 0.00043 per chromosome per generation for all aberrations and 0.00041 for inversions.
  • (12) Third, we must do more to strengthen the old principle of contribution: there are lots of people right now who feel they pay an awful lot more in than they ever get back.
  • (13) "We welcome a consultation, but default filters are awful," said ORG executive director Jim Killock.
  • (14) All samples are well detected by anti-B from AW, Aend, Ax, Am but none is detected by anti-B from ABx, Cis AB, or by an auto-anti-B.
  • (15) I even suspect that if Charlotte had truly known what marriage to a man so teeth-gnashingly awful really meant – in a way that no woman without the experience of going out with, let alone sleeping with, someone inappropriate can – she would have made a different choice.
  • (16) To determine whether the presence of small-intestinal malabsorption is associated with the development of AWS in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients with chronic diarrhea, we retrospectively reviewed the results of D-xylose testing performed in the clinical evaluation of 21 consecutive HIV-infected patients with chronic diarrhea.
  • (17) The atmospherics between the Athens government and its antagonists, which is now just about every player of importance in the rest of Europe, have been awful for weeks and have got more poisonous as they have neared the crunch.
  • (18) Cell lines AW 13516 and AW 8507 were derived from poorly differentiated SCC and epidermoid carcinoma of the tongue respectively.
  • (19) We worked awfully hard for this Premier League status and we don’t want to give it up.” Gylfi Sigurdsson’s 61st-minute strike – his sixth goal in 10 games – settled a scrappy Liberty Stadium contest that failed to spark into life until the Iceland international finished from substitute Leroy Fer’s pass.
  • (20) 9.27pm BST 67 min: The Argentinian fans are making an awful lot of noise here.

Frightful


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of fright; affrighted; frightened.
  • (a.) Full of that which causes fright; exciting alarm; impressing terror; shocking; as, a frightful chasm, or tempest; a frightful appearance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This may be one of the mechanisms by which animals under stress prepare their skeletal muscle for exercise as part of the 'fright and flight' reaction.
  • (2) Shares in London fell sharply for a second successive session on Monday as the world's investors took fright at fears of a meltdown in emerging market economies.
  • (3) That hit stocks as investors took fright, because the iPhone is Apple's biggest revenue generator.
  • (4) Roads were poorly developed and unsafe, hygiene was rudimentary, social security virtually inexistent and perinatal and children's mortality frightfully high.
  • (5) But with his claims last time round being over-inflated, it could be a while before his new rivals take fright.
  • (6) Deployed in an attacking central midfield role behind Peter Crouch, Adam excelled, giving Newcastle quite a few early frights with his incisive through-passes and well-timed late runs into the penalty area.
  • (7) Results correspond to previous studies of coping with chronic illness, and suggest that somatization following physical trauma is better explained with reference to personal meaning than to a fright-model as suggested in the post-traumatic stress criteria of the DSM-III-R.
  • (8) There is a frightful row going on at the IUCN over the decision of its executive director Julia Marton-Lefevre last week to side with Britain over the creation of the marine protected area .
  • (9) Just to put this in context, the Guardian has reported that: "Stock markets took fright on Wednesday as fears grew over the health of the global economy and the ongoing European debt crisis.
  • (10) A fright or shock induced toxic secretion (gel) from the epidermis of the Arabian Gulf catfish, Arius thalassinus, exhibits hemolytic activity when tested against red blood cells from many different sources.
  • (11) This essay -- 1) considers probable risks of retreating in fright from the approach which has significantly reduced the morbidity and mortality of surgical operations over the last 100 years, so that we may balance them against the known and putative risks of transfusion.
  • (12) Analysts immediately wiped £2bn off their forecasts for 2011 – which had been at about £6.5bn – after taking fright at the grim outlook for margins.
  • (13) The City took fright after high court judge Mr Justice Vos announced on Friday morning that he planned to manage the four phone-hacking claims filed against Trinity Mirror's newspapers earlier this week.
  • (14) This trend has resulted in extraordinary progress in many aspects of life, though at the same time created a frightfully specialized lifestyle.
  • (15) If international investors took fright, driving up the cost of serving the UK’s £1.5trn in government debt, he would simply order Threadneedle Street to start creating money and buying up gilts.
  • (16) Alfred Hitchcock's 1950 film, Stage Fright , was criticised for what became known as its "lying flashback" – a long flashback about a murder that we later learn is untrue.
  • (17) But analysts were sceptical of how long the campaign could be sustained, given the fright that investors took at the speed and scale of a slump that wiped out up to $4tn in stock market capitalisation.
  • (18) At the time, she felt so humiliated that she became stricken with stage fright.
  • (19) People’s weak appetite for economic risk may not be the result of pure fear, at least not in the sense of an anxiety like stage fright.
  • (20) There was no evident difference in responsiveness between the four groups, though 3 fish with lesions in the regions ventralis pars dorsalis and ventralis pars ventralis gave fright responses to novel stimuli.