What's the difference between beguile and flatter?

Beguile


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To delude by guile, artifice, or craft; to deceive or impose on, as by a false statement; to lure.
  • (v. t.) To elude, or evade by craft; to foil.
  • (v. t.) To cause the time of to pass without notice; to relieve the tedium or weariness of; to while away; to divert.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He is fond of recalling what the late Labour leader John Smith told him the last time he appeared on his show - "You have a way of asking beguiling questions with potentially lethal consequences."
  • (2) Ancient towns and wooded hillsides looked gorgeous reflected in the blue water, but we were beguiled just as much by the people.
  • (3) Shotton's Agent Provocateur story is a beguiling one.
  • (4) In his speech, watched by grandees such as the former party leader Lord Ashdown, who was Clegg’s original mentor, he said: “It is clear that in constituency after constituency north of the border, the beguiling appeal of Scottish nationalism has swept all before it, and south of the border a fear of what that means for the United Kingdom has strengthened English conservatism too.
  • (5) Situated on the road to Nazareth amid the beguiling beauty of the hills of northern Israel, the town is home to the family of Tomer Hemed, Brighton’s principal striker and a big threat to Boro’s dreams.
  • (6) The downside of this approach is the abiding and beguiling folly – so topical in the centenary year of the first world war – of thinking there is an off-the-peg solution from yesterday sitting on a shelf somewhere that can deal with the instabilities of today and tomorrow.
  • (7) But for those after something more off-track, or who balk at the $750 gorilla-tracking permit fee, the chimpanzees of Nyungwe are a beguiling alternative.
  • (8) More shocking still was the sight of an entire industry systematically pulling young people into their glittering and beguiling world – with little care for the collateral damage.
  • (9) "He was a children's entertainer and they were beguiled by his singing and painting.
  • (10) Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian With the beguiling hand of an architectural alchemist, Wilson has sliced a great circle out of a concrete facade in Liverpool and set it spinning.
  • (11) Others think their one-time champion Hague has been beguiled by Europeanist mandarins at the Foreign Office.
  • (12) United, however, have rarely impressed this season, with their failings illuminated by the contrast with a beguiling Arsenal.
  • (13) In the months since their formation, the eight members of Pussy Riot have perfected their own form of protest: their songs are pithy, angry missives, largely directed at Putin, and they remain beguilingly anonymous – the band wear neon balaclavas to conceal their identities and perform flash gigs in unexpected places: on public transport, for example, and, once, on a prison roof.
  • (14) This chunky combination of adventure game and Lego construction set has beguiled players for over two years, without a multimillion-dollar development budget, or blanket advertising.
  • (15) Nancy's novels and Jessica's memoirs offered a beguiling - and friends thought - inaccurate picture of the extraordinary life lived out chez Mitford under the irascible gaze of Lord Redesdale ("Uncle Matthew" in Love in a Cold Climate), celebrated for his dislike of foreigners and his daughters' friends, disparaged collectively as "sewers".
  • (16) One reason why the arguments for Brexit are so beguiling is because it’s easy to imagine an alternative world where some of the current laws of economics or politics don’t apply.
  • (17) While regulators chisel inconsequentially at the beguiling monoliths of private power that configure today’s information flows and dams, we the citizens have been reduced to raw material – sourced, bartered and mined in a curiously fabricated “privatised commons” of data and surveillance.
  • (18) Those new to Paper were beguiled, wondering what the queen of reality TV, gossip talkshows and social media was doing on the cover of a publication they had never heard of.
  • (19) In his speech to the Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow, the deputy prime minister said the Ukip and SNP leaders are making “seductive and beguiling” offers that are no more than a “counsel of despair”.
  • (20) In 2015 Labour’s Andy Burnham is offering the equally beguiling vision of “whole person care”.

Flatter


Definition:

  • (n.) One who, or that which, makes flat or flattens.
  • (n.) A flat-faced fulling hammer.
  • (n.) A drawplate with a narrow, rectangular orifice, for drawing flat strips, as watch springs, etc.
  • (v. t.) To treat with praise or blandishments; to gratify or attempt to gratify the self-love or vanity of, esp. by artful and interested commendation or attentions; to blandish; to cajole; to wheedle.
  • (v. t.) To raise hopes in; to encourage or favorable, but sometimes unfounded or deceitful, representations.
  • (v. t.) To portray too favorably; to give a too favorable idea of; as, his portrait flatters him.
  • (v. i.) To use flattery or insincere praise.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In platform shoes to emulate Johnson's height, and with the aid of prosthetic earlobes, Cranston becomes the 36th president: he bullies and cajoles, flatters and snarls and barks, tells dirty jokes or glows with idealism as required, and delivers the famous "Johnson treatment" to everyone from Martin Luther King to the racist Alabama governor George Wallace.
  • (2) With profound blockade, the slope of the edrophonium dose-response relationship was significantly flatter (P less than 0.05) than that of neostigmine.
  • (3) The groups showed significantly different iEMG fatigue slopes, with the control group showing declining iEMG by repetition, while the CLBP group showed flatter, slightly increasing iEMG.
  • (4) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Farage ’flattered’ by Trump’s call for him to be US ambassador In another shot at Obama, referring to remarks by the US president before the Brexit vote about the possible trade consequences of Britain leaving Europe, Farage said: “No longer do we have a president who says that we’re at the back of the line.” Everything you need to know about Trump and the Indiana Carrier factory Read more He also said Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent, had “wanted the European Union to be a prototype for a bigger model across the whole world”.
  • (5) "It may not be nice, kind or flattering, but to put it as unlawful would be startling," White said.
  • (6) Carbamazepine has a flatter concentration-time profile than valproic acid.
  • (7) Flattered, entreated, begged by the rest of the committee, he did not yield: "Recommendations are recommendations, there it is"; and "I honestly believe it's all there"; "I promise you I have done my very best"; "if I hadn't thought my recommendations were fit for purpose, I would not have made them"; "with all due respect, I could not have done any more than I did".
  • (8) Perhaps the most flattering epitaph for Ronnie Biggs, who has died aged 84, was written for him many years ago by the unlikely figure of the former commissioner of the Metropolitan police Sir Robert Mark .
  • (9) "So that was very flattering and a little surprising," she says.
  • (10) When spectrin was rebound to the erythrocyte membrane, a decay in the anisotropy was still present but was markedly less sensitive to solution viscosity and flatter at longer times.
  • (11) Things are different now: wonks observe that we’ve got lucky with the chairs – Margaret Hodge on the public accounts committee (PAC), Rory Stewart on defence, Sarah Wollaston on health – but committee work is flattered mainly by comparison with everything else.
  • (12) We praise and flatter each other and automatically learn the details of each other's lives.
  • (13) One-day chicks displayed reliably flatter generalization gradients than 3-4-day chicks.
  • (14) Early flattering comparisons were made with the Strokes and Sonic Youth.
  • (15) Their pay structure is flatter and their sense of responsibility to the community stronger.
  • (16) I will propose a new school funding model from the commonwealth which will be flatter, simpler, fairer to all the states and territories and equitable between students,” he said.
  • (17) The instantaneous I-V curve was linear while in the steady state the curve became flatter at low negative membrane potentials and steeper at high negative membrane potentials.
  • (18) To describe this course of action as "clutching at straws" is to flatter it.
  • (19) She should be confronting her party's prejudices, not flattering them.
  • (20) The steeper the curve of Spee, the more irregular the cusp height and angulations are with steeper anterior cusps and flatter posterior cusps.