What's the difference between bleating and plaintive?

Bleating


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Bleat
  • (a.) Crying as a sheep does.
  • (n.) The cry of, or as of, a sheep.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Using tonal stimuli based on the nonspeech stimuli of Mattingly et al., we found that subjects, with appropriate practice, could classify nonspeech chirp, short bleat, and bleat continua with boundaries equivalent to the syllable place continuum of Mattingly et al.
  • (2) There is no point in bleating about it,” Ritchie said.
  • (3) In a second experiment the bleats of 23 pregnant ewes were recorded; their lambs were taken at birth and tested with the sound of either their own mother's bleats, or with bleats from an alien ewe.
  • (4) With its bleating goats and vegetable patches, the centre is an oasis of rural tranquillity compared with the hustle and bustle of Goma down the road.
  • (5) Why is it acceptable to denigrate anything Catholic but bleat tolerance about every other religion?
  • (6) Worse for Greece, many of the suits in Brussels believe that for all the bleating, it is a wealthy country that only need embark on some redistribution of its own to solve much of its poverty.
  • (7) If the 13-year legal battle over Firing Zone 918 ends in Israel's favour, the bleat of goats will be replaced by the crack of assault rifles and the villagers will be moved into a nearby town.
  • (8) "But it's just Heartbeat with an umbilical hernia," bleat the unbelievers, pinching their delicate nosey-woses at the sight of steaming prolapses and swatting away the cuddles and godliness with their Game Of Thrones box sets.
  • (9) Best paragraph: “Many bleated they had nothing to hide and thus have nothing to fear during the Obama (and Bush) administration, out of trust for a president or fear of terror.
  • (10) I don’t think anyone can bleat if they don’t act.
  • (11) Bogus claims about “sovereignty”, and ill-judged bleating about “Brussels”, influenced many people I met, even before we were presented with the results.
  • (12) As a result, general inequality has been becoming more grievous with every year that passes, and without a bleat from the leaders of the party who once spoke up so trenchantly and characteristically for greater equality.
  • (13) Significantly more stimulated ewes licked the lamb and emitted low-pitched bleats in a 30-min test.
  • (14) Public corporations are like nation states in one respect, namely that while they may bleat (or boast) about their "values", in the end they are driven only by their national or corporate interests – which in practice means the interests of shareholders.
  • (15) Experts are not certain at this stage if Tian Tian (left) is pregnant, but the latest hormone tests are said to show positive signs and she is being closely watched for signs of labour such as restless behaviour and bleating.
  • (16) There is broad agreement that this is a London problem and only bleating metropolitan elites are troubled by it.
  • (17) So isn't he merely bleating about the treatment he dishes out to others?
  • (18) And there is a strong feeling that we should do over the Bleating Broadcasting Corporation.
  • (19) "Rather than just bleat about it, I think we should just do something about it … I believe in the territory, I love the territory," he said, standing next to his candidate for the marginal seat of Solomon, Luke Gosling.
  • (20) Trump’s supporters, like Brexit supporters before them, will say that these are merely the bleatings of the sore losers – the Remoaners, the Grimtons, or whatever portmanteau is conceived next.

Plaintive


Definition:

  • (n.) Repining; complaining; lamenting.
  • (n.) Expressive of sorrow or melancholy; mournful; sad.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) 3.46pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: Leveson asks Cameron plaintively for political consensus to get reforms through; the PM agrees.
  • (2) Facebook Twitter Pinterest More critical is Desculpa Neymar (Sorry Neymar) a plaintive critique by Edu Krieger that highlights some of the grievances of the anti-World Cup protests that have taken place across the country since last year.
  • (3) A quarter of a century after I was hanging around Brent Cross, I was one of the team at the New Economics Foundation on the Clone Town Britain campaign, a plaintive cry against everywhere looking the same.
  • (4) Mirrors (2016) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Over plaintive piano and a slurry of Trump misogyny, a group of young girls comb their hair before a question is posed.
  • (5) Without naming and shaming, during the USA's game against Portugal, I saw one leftwing tweeter ask with plaintive, stony-faced sincerity "how can anyone be supporting the imperialists?"
  • (6) One senior lieutenant made a plaintive call for funds.
  • (7) Indeed, the running message of the black spider letters is not potency but a plaintive sigh of woe at a world going to the dogs.
  • (8) The first plaintive cries for Rooney to be brought on could be heard late in the first half.
  • (9) It’s a fight between what I know my country should be and what I see it turning into, which is the plaintive cry of all American millennials.
  • (10) And she had just one plaintive answer when I asked how she was.
  • (11) David Cameron asked plaintively more than once at prime minister's questions.
  • (12) The news that Facebook has splurged $2bn (£1.2bn) on buying Oculus Rift , the world's first really viable virtual reality headset, has set off waves of plaintive snark in the world of videogames.
  • (13) asked the Irish Times plaintively, evoking the poetry of WB Yeats from 1913 to grieve over the surrender of Irish sovereignty to a bunch of IMF and ECB accountants.
  • (14) Search and update are not the same Many a high-profile tweeter has confused the "search" and "update status" boxes, leading to such horrors as @edballsmp's plaintive "ed balls".
  • (15) The centre posted some before-and-after pictures, along with a plaintive message confirming that someone had recently been up to no good with a brush.
  • (16) "We need your help," begins the plaintive ad on the front of the Whitehaven News.
  • (17) There were old men and women, too feeble to walk, who were placed in carts; the younger members of the community on foot were carrying their bundles of clothes … while the children, with looks of alarm, walked alongside … A cry of grief went up to heaven, the long plaintive wail, like a funeral coronach, was resumed … the sound re-echoed through the wide valley of Strath in one prolonged note of desolation".
  • (18) When Republicans repeatedly get on stage at their national convention and toss attack after attack at my mom,” she wrote in a plaintive letter to supporters, “calling her things I’d never say in front of my children – let alone on live TV – they’re talking about a caricature they’ve imagined, not the woman I love and respect.” As he sought to appear more presidential, even the GOP’s nominee, Donald Trump , seemed embarrassed by the baying crowd, waving aside demands for Clinton’s incarceration with hands that encouraged the mob instead to chant “USA!
  • (19) he marvels plaintively, pretending to find such interest in him unfathomable. "
  • (20) The centre posted some graphic before-and-after pictures, along with a plaintive message confirming that someone had recently been up to no good with a brush.

Words possibly related to "bleating"