What's the difference between awful and horrific?

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.

Horrific


Definition:

  • (a.) Causing horror; frightful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "I hope that he has the sleepless nights I have had for the past five weeks because my son sustained horrific injuries."
  • (2) She reported violence and aggression from patients and their relatives and said she felt unsupported by management after “horrific incidents”.
  • (3) We have an operation an hour away on the border and the barrel bombs cause horrific injuries.” Islamic Relief and MSF said the health system in Syria is decimated and the need for reconstructive surgery and burns treatment is enormous.
  • (4) The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens and we've moved on to other things, that's not who we are."
  • (5) Around 800,000 people died of starvation in one of the most horrific chapters of the war as the city was besieged by the Nazis for two and a half years.
  • (6) She continued: "The scale of his suffering was truly horrific.
  • (7) The response to this horrific incident seems to be a growing trend where travellers understand the geography, distances and circumstances, and weigh up risks in a real way."
  • (8) The poor are often the people deeply rooted in place, whether they’re fisherfolk in the Mekong Delta (due to go underwater from rising seas) or farmers in desertifying Africa or India, where a horrific heatwave and drought killed at least 300 last month and left 330 million without enough water.
  • (9) Kevin Williamson in National Review wrote that there is “no non-horrific interpretation” of the episode with the stones.
  • (10) What happened to her was beyond horrific, she suffered that night, she suffered in prison and she is still suffering.” Ibrahim’s lawyer, Nigel Richardson, is preparing to submit her case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which pursues miscarriages of justice.
  • (11) 'And, yes, it has horrifically backfired, but I think this could have backfired for any other family.'
  • (12) There was the man who did all those horrific things outside the home as part of his job.
  • (13) A majority believes that spending cuts and tax rises are necessary responses to a horrific budget deficit and many hold Labour rather than the coalition responsible for the Britain's ills.
  • (14) In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it's easy to talk about guns.
  • (15) The game also makes a lot of mileage out of building up razor-sharp tension, reducing the soundtrack to footfalls and creaking doors and then having horrific monsters amble into view as though this is the natural state of things.
  • (16) Perpetrators must never be allowed to think that their horrific acts will go overlooked or go unpunished ... Victims and survivors … deserve to be heard now, just as they should have been years ago, and they deserve justice, just as they did then,” she said.
  • (17) The horrific killing of Matthew Shepard in 1998 is widely seen as one of the worst anti-gay hate crimes in American history.
  • (18) He’s been the outstanding player.” Quick to tweet about Kane being on fire – complete with flame emojis – when the Tottenham Hotspur striker scored against Lithuania, Austin was taken to task on Twitter by Joey Barton, his QPR team-mate, the following morning for his “horrific” dress sense after he appeared on Soccer AM .
  • (19) Ebola is a horrific disease that kills more than half of people infected by it, though with specialist western treatment that death rate would likely fall a little.
  • (20) Tuesday’s horrific chemical attack was a war crime which requires urgent independent UN investigation and those responsible must be held to account.” Corbyn said there was a need to “urgently reconvene the Geneva peace talks and unrelenting international pressure for a negotiated settlement of the conflict”.