What's the difference between belligerent and militant?

Belligerent


Definition:

  • (p. pr.) Waging war; carrying on war.
  • (p. pr.) Pertaining, or tending, to war; of or relating to belligerents; as, a belligerent tone; belligerent rights.
  • (n.) A nation or state recognized as carrying on war; a person engaged in warfare.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He could be the target of more punishing wit, as when Michael Foot, noting a tendency to be tougher abroad than at home, called him "a belligerent Bertie Wooster without even a Jeeves to restrain him."
  • (2) Though the exercises have given the US a chance to vent its frustration at what appears to be state-sponsored espionage and theft on an industrial scale, China has been belligerent.
  • (3) As well as George Dyer, there was the murderer Perry Smith in the Truman Capote story Infamous, the hot-headed mobster child-killer in Road To Perdition, the brooding Ted Hughes in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Sylvia biopic and a belligerent Mossad assassin in Steven Spielberg’s Munich.
  • (4) This plays into the widespread belief that Muslims are under attack from a belligerent west and its local proxies.
  • (5) In international affairs he has found the only posture more dangerous than belligerence – incoherence.
  • (6) The belligerence of 7 patients who had suffered an acute brain insult was effectively controlled by propranolol in doses of 60 to 320 mg per day.
  • (7) However, despite the country’s belligerent behaviour in the region and its egregious human rights record, which have long left it isolated, there is an opportunity for engagement given that prominent regime officials have indicated a willingness to reform.
  • (8) Asked about the status of his own job, the press secretary joked “I’m right here”, telling reporters, in a belligerent line that could have been uttered by his impersonator Melissa McCarthy: “You can keep taking your selfies.” The president was busy sowing confusion by trying a new passive-aggressive tone on Twitter , musing: “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out.
  • (9) Despite the pro-AV leader, Ed Miliband, having stuck his neck out a few times for the yeses, belligerent turns by grumpy old stagers such as John Reid and David Blunkett have created the impression that the people's party has no interest in giving the people more of a say.
  • (10) To avoid this, women in high executive office often assume a corporate persona that overcompensates by being either brittle and defensive, or Thatcher-esque in terms of belligerence.
  • (11) European commission upgrades growth forecast for UK economy Read more Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: “The initial belligerence of the Trump administration towards China and Japan appears to have given way to a more practicable way of doing things, and while peace may not have broken out quite yet, some welcome pragmatism does appear to be taking hold in Washington.
  • (12) Mattis pointedly warned North Korea to back off, pledging an “overwhelming” response to any belligerence .
  • (13) Germany's bureaucratic stasis contrasts with a welter of events, official and unofficial, digital, public and private, in the other former belligerent countries.
  • (14) For the highest purpose of a democratic government is to bring a society together and hold it together, not to divide it with fears, with rumours of wars, with acts of belligerence against other and then against its own.
  • (15) But if the odd local blog bristles that us lot should “go back where we came from”, the antipathy to immigrants from farther away ( 8.59% of the local population, according to a recent Oxford University study ; far lower than the 12.5% national average) is much stronger: especially to the eastern Europeans, many of whom have landed in scruffy parts of Cliftonville, where they have belligerently set about opening shops and car washes, and trying to get on with their lives.
  • (16) Five and a half decades of history show us that such belligerence inhibits better judgement.
  • (17) The White House condemned the attack as "belligerent", adding: "The United States is firmly committed to the defence of our ally … and to the maintenance of regional peace and stability."
  • (18) Clapper described the threats from Pyongyang as "very belligerent" and said he is "very concerned about the actions of the new young leader", Kim Jong-un .
  • (19) Israeli voters – including Labourites disillusioned by what they saw as Palestinian mendacity and belligerency – felt drawn to the old warrior.
  • (20) These conciliatory tactics did not immediately appeal to Thatcher, though she learned to swallow her belligerence.

Militant


Definition:

  • (a.) Engaged in warfare; fighting; combating; serving as a soldier.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It said 70 of the killed militants were from Isis, while the other 50 it described as being aligned with the Nusra Front, the parent organisation of the Khorasan cell and al-Qaida’s preferred affiliate in Syria.
  • (2) For this to work, its leaders had to be able to at least influence the behaviour and tactics of the militant operators on the ground.
  • (3) But late last month, Amisom pushed them out of Afgoye, a strategic stronghold 30km from Mogadishu, where Amisom officials say the militants used to manufacture explosives used in attacks on the capital.
  • (4) But Abaaoud, the man thought to be a key planner for the group behind the Paris attacks, boasted to a niece that he had brought around 90 militants back to Europe with him.
  • (5) Although the intraoperative cytologic examination showed a picture suggestive of malignancy, including giant cells and atypical mitotic figures, the clinical and radiologic history militated against a malignant nature for the lesion, which was thus classified as a low-grade giant-cell astrocytoma.
  • (6) The concept of a head of state as a "defender" of any sort of faith is uncomfortable in an age when religion is again acquiring a habit of militancy.
  • (7) The clash is the latest in a deadly stream of attacks since July, which officials said had already claimed the lives of at least 70 members of the security services and hundreds of PKK militants.
  • (8) Kurdish forces are also working to sever the militants’ supply lines between Syria and Iraq.
  • (9) In the clip – believed to be the first footage of a Briton fighting for the militants in Iraq rather than Syria – he urges others to take up arms and join the growing ranks of foreign fighters.
  • (10) Last week, Cohen estimated the militants were still earning “several million dollars per week from the sale of stolen and smuggled energy resources” – down on what they pulled in before the coalition air strikes, but still a substantial amount.
  • (11) Last week Isis bulldozed the ancient city of Nimrud , also near Mosul, which the militant group conquered in a lightning advance last summer.
  • (12) It is one of the largest cities held by Islamic State militants and lies on the road connecting Baghdad to Mosul.
  • (13) Isis recently threatened to kill American hostages to avenge the crushing airstrikes in Iraq against militants advancing on Mount Sinjar and the Kurdish capital of Irbil.
  • (14) The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu , has vowed the militant Islamist group Hamas, blamed by Israel for the kidnapping, will "pay a heavy price".
  • (15) The militants have also seized a huge chunk of territory straddling the Iraq-Syria border, and have declared a self-styled caliphate in the territory they control.
  • (16) Mullen said earlier this week there is a "proxy connection" between Pakistani intelligence services and the Haqqanis, meaning the militants are secretly doing the Pakistanis' bidding.
  • (17) Speaking in Washington on Thursday, the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, said the offensive underscored the growing threat posed by Isis militants – whom he referred to using the group’s Arabic acronym “Daesh”.
  • (18) Islamist militants have attacked Iraq's largest oil refinery in the city of Baiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, as Iran raised the prospect of direct military intervention to protect Shia holy sites.
  • (19) The dramatic rise of Islamic State (Isis) in Syria and Iraq is helping to tear apart the Pakistani Taliban, the beleaguered militant group beset by infighting and splits.
  • (20) A year after the establishment of the so-called caliphate by Islamic State , western governments are struggling for strategies to challenge sympathy among their citizens towards the militants.