What's the difference between bless and curse?

Bless


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To make or pronounce holy; to consecrate
  • (v. t.) To make happy, blithesome, or joyous; to confer prosperity or happiness upon; to grant divine favor to.
  • (v. t.) To express a wish or prayer for the happiness of; to invoke a blessing upon; -- applied to persons.
  • (v. t.) To invoke or confer beneficial attributes or qualities upon; to invoke or confer a blessing on, -- as on food.
  • (v. t.) To make the sign of the cross upon; to cross (one's self).
  • (v. t.) To guard; to keep; to protect.
  • (v. t.) To praise, or glorify; to extol for excellences.
  • (v. t.) To esteem or account happy; to felicitate.
  • (v. t.) To wave; to brandish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Some parents are blessed with a soul that lights up every time their little precious brings them a carefully crafted portrait or home-made greetings card.
  • (2) Attorneys for people caught on the US’s sprawling terrorism watchlists are expressing concern that the latest tactic by gun control advocates is blessing the legitimacy of a process they say threatens civil rights.
  • (3) I often remind him that after a test or a difficulty, blessings arrive.
  • (4) The move, first mooted two months ago, has been instigated with Jol's blessing and the new man was quick to insist he had spent "many hours" talking with his compatriot prior to accepting the position, even if his arrival effectively dilutes the manager's powerbase at the club.
  • (5) Unable to tap international markets, with its banks forced to rely on limited emergency funding provided on a week-by-week basis with the blessing of the ECB, it is fast running out of cash.
  • (6) The fact that property is unequally distributed so many people don't have blessed "property rights" gets airbrushed from the theory.
  • (7) Waitrose evokes strong opinions: from sniffy derision about the supermarket's perceived airs and graces to expressions of joy from middle-class incomers when their gentrified area is blessed with a branch.
  • (8) Photograph: Alex Lake for Observer Food Monthly Sky Sports’ managing director, Barney Francis, added: “We wish Gary all the very best as he returns to football with our blessing and begins his managerial career with Valencia.
  • (9) May God bless you all, and may God continue to bless America.
  • (10) It is a sacred moment, and you feel blessed merely to have witnessed it.
  • (11) He’s gifted, a blessed young man with incredible hand speed and power.
  • (12) We felt blessed,” said Rebecca, pulling out another family picture in which a smiling Sarah leans her head against her mother’s shoulder, her younger siblings crowing around them.
  • (13) He often claimed that God had blessed him with the gift of the delayed hangover, one that kicked in only when he had done his day's work.
  • (14) While big businesses have enjoyed access to new couriers, Royal Mail itself eventually reached such a dire state that the Hooper report urged the government to rewrite the law to clarify that competition was a mixed blessing.
  • (15) Rate of progression of dementia was determined in 77 patients by repeated administration of the Blessed Dementia Scale (BDS).
  • (16) For whatever reason, the team is not gelling, despite substantial financial backing in the summer and the dressing room being blessed with a huge amount of quality.
  • (17) I wish him - with Caroline and the family - every blessing, and hope that the church of England and the Anglican communion will share my pleasure at this appointment and support him with prayer and love."
  • (18) Meena Raman of the Malaysia-based Third World Network told IPS: "Given the stance of the United States thus far in the Rio+20 negotiations, and the position they have taken in the climate change negotiations in Durban, it may perhaps be a blessing that President Obama is not coming to Rio."
  • (19) It was an unbelievable feeling,” Keating told Associated Press, adding she felt “totally blessed and loved” by the pope.
  • (20) Quite a number of people brought up in the emotional straitjackets of the English upper classes found blessed relief in the permission the Holy Spirit gave them to weep or laugh and gibber and faint in public.

Curse


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To call upon divine or supernatural power to send injury upon; to imprecate evil upon; to execrate.
  • (v. t.) To bring great evil upon; to be the cause of serious harm or unhappiness to; to furnish with that which will be a cause of deep trouble; to afflict or injure grievously; to harass or torment.
  • (v. i.) To utter imprecations or curses; to affirm or deny with imprecations; to swear.
  • (v. t.) An invocation of, or prayer for, harm or injury; malediction.
  • (v. t.) Evil pronounced or invoked upon another, solemnly, or in passion; subjection to, or sentence of, divine condemnation.
  • (v. t.) The cause of great harm, evil, or misfortune; that which brings evil or severe affliction; torment.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But it was also a portrait of an England charged with secrets - and, as Michael Billington put it, the work of an accomplished playwright who understood the English curse of 'emotional evasion.'
  • (2) A new, terrible curse that comes on top of the bleaching, the battering, the poisoning and the pollution.
  • (3) She comes from the "cursed" political dynasty in Pakistan : her grandfather, the former president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed in 1979, three years before Fatima was born; her father, the radical politician Murtaza Bhutto, was shot dead by police in 1996; and her aunt, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed in a bombing in 2007.
  • (4) It has somehow managed to escape the curse of Murdoch, who partly owns it.
  • (5) But it accused South Park of having mocked the prophet, and cited Islamic scholars who ruled that "whoever curses the messenger of Allah must be killed".
  • (6) Now they await the results of the American League Championship Series to see whether this year's World Series will be a rematch of 2004, when the Cardinals were swept by the curse-reversing Boston Red Sox, or 2006, when the Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers and became one of the worst teams to win the World Series in MLB history .
  • (7) Several survivors and family members of the victims who were flown to the US testified this week , and one cursed Bales for attacking villagers as some slept and others screamed for mercy.
  • (8) The bakers can freeze each layer as it goes on, tensely waiting by the ice box, cursing under their breath.
  • (9) Still alive, he was then surrounded by people who cursed and spat at him, kicked him in the head and tried to hit him with a chair.
  • (10) How they got here You'll be forgiven if you thought they were still cursed, if you had been following recent baseball history.
  • (11) Not a Lynyrd Skynyrd "doom will plague you at every turn" sort of curse, it must be said; more a sequence of mildly irritating events.
  • (12) In 1 infant diagnosed with Ondine's curse, examination showed diffuse neuronal loss and gliosis in the medullary tegmentum.
  • (13) Since then, the cursing and sobbing have been plentiful.
  • (14) Maguwu said: "To me it's very clear the diamonds have been a curse to this country.
  • (15) As Taylor cursed, McClaren embarked on a tactical rejig.
  • (16) The curse of playing Ari Gold is that Jeremy Piven may have to spend the rest of his life trying to convince the world he is not a rage-fuelled blustering asshole.
  • (17) They managed to catch two people, aged no more than 30, and were beating them up badly, swearing at them all the time and cursing the Shia clerics, saying: "Where is al-Khomeini now?
  • (18) It would swirl around that child's head in the manner of a bad fairy from a storybook bringing along a cursed gift to a christening.
  • (19) Infantile delivery also frequently serves to take the curse off self-publicity; sleight of hand for those who find "my programme is on BBC2 tonight" too presumptuous and exposing, and prefer to cower behind the low-status imbecility of "I done rote a fingy for da tellybox!"
  • (20) This discovered gothic quality within everyday life found one of its finest expressions in the American work of French-born director Jacques Tourneur , especially the brilliant Cat People (1943), Curse of the Cat People (1944) and Night of the Demon (1957).