What's the difference between blithe and insouciant?

Blithe


Definition:

  • (a.) Gay; merry; sprightly; joyous; glad; cheerful; as, a blithe spirit.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On Wednesday, the ire of the marchers was focused on all those Lib Dems who blithely signed the NUS's anti-fees pledge ("I pledge to vote against any increase in fees in the next parliament and to pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative" – yesterday, Nick Clegg limply said that he "should have been more careful" than to put his name to it).
  • (2) Instead, the spending review blithely asserted "couples with children must work 24 hours per week between them" in order to get a credit that is worth up to an annual maximum of £3,870.
  • (3) Last month, for example, the Daily Telegraph's Peter Oborne bemoaned their "devastating" fate, in a piece worth quoting at reasonable length, if only to prove that the idea of an out-of-touch elite blithely wreaking havoc is not the preserve of hard-bitten lefties.
  • (4) This is why, you see, people with rucksacks pummel all those in their immediate vicinity with their giant sacks as they trundle on their way, whacking them about as they blithely move about trains, pavements or any other public area.
  • (5) These films were a blithe rebuttal of the critic Edward Said’s insight that, in a novel like Mansfield Park, the “English” story necessarily concealed the story, located elsewhere but inextricable from the main narrative, of a West Indian sugar plantation.
  • (6) Click here for the Magic in the Moonlight trailer Compared with the gloomy ruminations on ageing and aspiration that characterised the well-received Blue Jasmine, which won Cate Blanchett an Oscar , this is Allen going back to the knockabout farce and blithe May-December couplings that populate his lighter films.
  • (7) This narrative is a form of manufacture of innocence to mask a great crime: what your script blithely calls "the detainee program".
  • (8) Here lies our greatest risk, one insufficiently appreciated by those who so blithely accept the tentacles of corporation, press and state insinuating their way into the private sphere.
  • (9) When he arrived at the venue and was confronted by a motley horde of fans, tipped off by a tweet, instead of sidling in the back to pace about alone in a corridor, like a normal human would, Fry blithely faced the crowd, chatting and signing autographs.
  • (10) She says she "naively stumbled into the campaign", starting the petition on Change.org, which she found through a Google search, and setting her target at a blithely optimistic 1m signatures.
  • (11) I have a concern that there are too many of them – and most will gather dust on shelves, and hospitals will go blithely on as they always have.
  • (12) But they blithely ignore the fact that wealth isn't being created under the existing broken economic model.
  • (13) Mr Osborne can hardly not know this, but he continues blithely to define living within our means as a government challenge, rather than a wider challenge to the entire public and private sector.
  • (14) Yes, when we all had the blithe assumption that houses would always rise in value, that bankers were always going to get £3m bonuses.
  • (15) In a fascinating recent article the economist Tyler Cowen pointed out the problem with blithe assumptions about a better future – they miss out on the history of what actually happened in the great industrial transformations of the past.
  • (16) Phone jammed to her ear, laptop open on her knee, she was blithely conducting a conference call while wearing highlighter foils.
  • (17) The original sin of the euro-enthusiasts was to settle the politics first and then blithely assume that the economics would sort themselves out.
  • (18) This distinction, popularised by Michael Ignatieff in the mid-1990s, has received much debate, which Bragg blithely ignores.
  • (19) It’s just interesting that home advantage – the chance to build a rapport with local audiences; familiarity with local culture, etc – is being blithely squandered.
  • (20) But clearly there is a difference between blithely hurtling into catastrophe and trying to lead a party away from it.

Insouciant


Definition:

  • (a.) Careless; heedless; indifferent; unconcerned.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For every drop shot that was loose, lazy and tossed away a point, there was another that smacked of insouciant brilliance.
  • (2) In the Russian gallery, for example, the courageous Vadim Zakharov presents a pointed version of the Danaë myth in which an insouciant dictator (of whom it is hard not to think: Putin) sits on a high beam on a saddle, shelling nuts all day while gold coins rain down from a vast shower-head only to be hoisted in buckets by faceless thuggish men in suits.
  • (3) While deplorable and to a degree self-defeating, this insouciant defiance also makes a grim kind of sense, both historically and reinforced by recent events.
  • (4) Equally popular was the stylish Borsalino, starring Belmondo and Alain Delon as insouciant gangsters in 1930s Marseilles.
  • (5) At the same time, it is important for our enjoyment of Bake Off that the insouciance does not go all the way (the inquisitive camera, for example, captures Ian’s set jaw, betraying his iron will).
  • (6) The minutes of the policy convention show DSD representatives insouciant about sharing metadata on Australians – so long as it had been hoovered up “unintentionally” they were happy to store and to disclose it without obtaining a warrant.
  • (7) But Putin appeared insouciant in the face of the western manoeuvres.
  • (8) It would defy every norm that is America.” Candidates were not only insouciant about human rights abroad; they also felt comfortable doubting rights enshrined by US law.
  • (9) DeepMind is excited to have joined forces with Google,” it says, with an unapologetic insouciance not normally seen with the search giant’s other acquisitions.
  • (10) No one assumes that New Zealand will have an impact in South Africa, yet insouciance is an asset when other sides are so overwrought.
  • (11) I have such pale legs and they never burn!” I insouciantly declared to onlookers, a mere 12 hours before I began convulsing, shaking, sweating and finding myself unable to walk for three days.
  • (12) For this tale of a young waitress with an insouciant approach to haircuts, garden gnomes, and life, Craig Lucas supplies the book, Daniel Messé and Nathan Tyse the music and lyrics.
  • (13) Townsfolk were also displaying a distinct insouciance to pledges by green activists to hold a day of protest there and trash a field of GM crops at the town's Rothamsted research station.
  • (14) He was insouciant, dapper, elegant, somehow intensely English – though O'Toole himself was an Irishman and proud of it – and also outrageously sexy.
  • (15) It is a look that matches his backbench style: unflappable but not insouciant; with authority but no menace and, it once seemed, palpably relieved to be off the front line.
  • (16) The former chief secretary to the treasury and shadow everything produces her lanyard with dazzling insouciance and continues to fish-dance her way in.
  • (17) At the time I remember thinking about those pictures in terms of horror films, trying to imagine the context in which people might so casually abuse power and so insouciantly photograph their own crimes.
  • (18) In a display of Gallic insouciance, the French identified themselves as both the most arrogant and least arrogant.
  • (19) No rush, lads, you whistle an insouciant trill and scratch the old jacksie.
  • (20) Rooney plundered two goals in two minutes with almost insouciant ease and could have had a hat-trick before the hour came up, as the defensive solidity Liverpool had shown in the first half evaporated in front of the Stretford End.