What's the difference between beseech and pray?

Beseech


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To ask or entreat with urgency; to supplicate; to implore.
  • (n.) Solicitation; supplication.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) After his death, the young man's parents contacted police to admit that they had helped him achieve his wish to end "a second-class existence" by taking him abroad – despite praying to the last second, and beseeching him to change his mind.
  • (2) Opposition to the policy decision was mounted by the American Medical Association which considered it "frightening and abhorrent" and the american College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists which beseeched Congress to restore the patient's rights to receive full information and the health professional obligation to provide the information.
  • (3) In the name of this suffering people, whose cries to heaven become more deafening each day, I beg you, I beseech you, I order you in the name of God: stop the repression,” he said in a speech to government soldiers the day before his death.
  • (4) He's beseeching the members of the committee to recognize the value of the work the intelligence community does.
  • (5) This is not a man who has to charm or beseech an audience; his ideas are what he uses to win people over.
  • (6) He stares at her, “beseeching, demanding my help, but I am powerless, too.
  • (7) Why, why, why, damnable government?” beseeched Inés Abraján.
  • (8) The prime minister doesn’t hesitate to beseech the markets to attack the country,” Syriza said.
  • (9) After its Google News search returned more than 43,000 results for the search "Hollande + Normal", and more than 88,000 for "President + normal", the site launched a "No 'Normal' Day", hashtagged on Twitter, in which it beseeched journalists to broaden their vocabulary, asking did they really mean "normal", or perhaps "ordinary", "natural", "sober", "honest" or "reasonable"?
  • (10) Kassig’s parents have also posted a video message online beseeching the group to release him unharmed.
  • (11) At least 100,000 tourists who had driven to Greece from neighbouring Bulgaria and Serbia were stranded, with thousands abandoning their cars by the side of the road and officials taking the highly unusual step of beseeching visitors to stock up on fuel in Macedonia.
  • (12) That said, the Telegraph’s commenting threads do not seem to be similarly filled with Green party supporters beseeching its readership to consider the full consequences of climate change.
  • (13) His critic pleaded for "this whole sorry saga to go the way of the dodo", while other Fry fans beseeched him not pull the plug on his tweets, prompting Fry into a change of heart.
  • (14) he was asked by beseeching Spanish reporters after taking training at Seville, as the saga of his move to Spurs dragged on.
  • (15) Finally, the necessity of uniform techniques and methods of evaluation is beseeched so that results of new innovations can be analyzed earlier and more critically.
  • (16) But, beseeched Paxman, "do you think that's a greater consideration than the fact that they might be in love?"
  • (17) Come see yourself.” Blair urged Gaddafi to give him a phone number so he could contact him urgently, and beseeched him to “do something that allows the process to start, end the bloodshed, start a new constitution”.
  • (18) In debates with friends, family and neighbours, at times hectoring, at others beseeching, filled with venom and vigour on both sides, such a close race is going to be won one vote at a time.
  • (19) Oscillating between fury and despair, the customers beseech pharmacists to hand over medications that they frequently do not have in stock.
  • (20) Seconds before, Dalglish was on the touchline beseeching his player to calm down.

Pray


Definition:

  • (n. & v.) See Pry.
  • (v. i.) To make request with earnestness or zeal, as for something desired; to make entreaty or supplication; to offer prayer to a deity or divine being as a religious act; specifically, to address the Supreme Being with adoration, confession, supplication, and thanksgiving.
  • (v. t.) To address earnest request to; to supplicate; to entreat; to implore; to beseech.
  • (v. t.) To ask earnestly for; to seek to obtain by supplication; to entreat for.
  • (v. t.) To effect or accomplish by praying; as, to pray a soul out of purgatory.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) People praying, voicing their views and heart, were met with disdain and a level of force exceeding what was needed.
  • (2) Facebook Twitter Pinterest A child praying at the vigil site for Freddie Gray in Baltimore.
  • (3) I am being prayed for in the woods of northern California!
  • (4) When he had those Aids I went to my synagogue and I prayed for him.” Sterling said he admired Johnson, 53, as a “good” man, then contradicted himself.
  • (5) "I've been praying and praying to Papa," Nan cried, "but it feels like He isn't listening."
  • (6) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Muslims pray at the Al Khalil mosque in Molenbeek.
  • (7) She comes to church with me; she doesn’t pray in the way I do, but she listens.
  • (8) They will whip you if you don’t pray.” In Damascus there is a new industry of “facilitators” who offer advice to Syrians who want to get out.
  • (9) A few metres away, Francisco-Javier Muñoz, a lawyer originally from Spain, was praying.
  • (10) Since the allegations became public, fans have taken to holding up homemade signs at Florida State games: "We Support Famous Jameis", "Jameis is Innocent," and "In Jameis Christ We Pray".
  • (11) New Afghan national police officers pray during their graduation ceremony.
  • (12) The NYPD's demographics unit assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed.
  • (13) I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for an electromagnetic storm that would cancel out every mistake I'd ever made.'
  • (14) As she gazes down from her plane at the sprawling Amazon jungle below, she will hope and pray that, with a number of giant infrastructure projects planned in the region, history is not about to repeat itself.
  • (15) The Palestinians see this as Jewish encroachment on the site, the holiest in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam, while Jewish activists like Glick say they are being discriminated against by limiting their chances to pray atop the mount.
  • (16) The general atmosphere was that there was no point in summoning the police – the policeman is a local settler from Kiryat Arba who comes to pray with the Hebron settlers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs on Fridays.
  • (17) It stands 25km north of Damascus, near the ancient Saydnaya monastery where Christians and Muslims have prayed together for centuries.
  • (18) My mother prays for me,” said Betancourt, a Honduran.
  • (19) Barcelona’s miracle worker Lionel Messi leaves Arsenal praying for one | Barney Ronay Read more City continue to monitor Messi’s situation should he become unsettled.
  • (20) Facebook Twitter Pinterest A woman prays in front of the Flame of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Tokyo, a memorial for the victims of the atomic bombings in 1945.