What's the difference between bless and pray?

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.

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.