What's the difference between blithe and mirth?

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.

Mirth


Definition:

  • (n.) Merriment; gayety accompanied with laughter; jollity.
  • (n.) That which causes merriment.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But the young Sontag could barely contain her mirth: "I just couldn't stop laughing," she says.
  • (2) She laughs raucously again, mirth appearing to be, incongruously, her way of acknowledging pain.
  • (3) Proving that laughter is infectious – and the best antidote – British actor Emma Watson showed Twitter solidarity with thousands of women who have posted mirthful pictures of themselves in defiance of a call by a Turkish politician for women to stop laughing in public.
  • (4) This was greeted with mirth in the courtroom but he was charged with insulting the president, an offence punishable by up to a year in prison.
  • (5) That, at least, is what many people have insisted from antiquity on – while prompting at the same time all kinds of counter-claims that other species share our expression of mirth (monkeys and, most recently, rats being the most common candidates, though there is one suggestion, in an ancient Jewish commentary, that for some reason Aristotle thought herons were laughers too).
  • (6) Anatomists may take an especial interest in the letters No 1903 to HERDER and No 1904 to CHARLOTTE v. STEIN (both dated the March 27, 1784) which demonstrate the discoverer's mirth in finding out the human os intermaxillare.
  • (7) Provoking MPs' schoolboy mirth at the hint of an innuendo to the female MP, the prime minister joked: "Maybe I should start all over again."
  • (8) My Twitter stream, largely metropolitan, explodes with mirth: this’ll take Farage down a peg or two!
  • (9) SEE YOU IN COURT There was much mirth on Twitter when judges in the ninth circuit court of appeals upheld a temporary restraining order on Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban on arrivals from seven Muslim-majority countries.
  • (10) An unfortunate camera angle left pundit Glenn Hoddle's tight trousers in full view, leading to endless mirth on Twitter.
  • (11) Herman Van Rompuy, a man whose very name seems to provoke mirth in anglocentric circles, is known for composing the occasional haiku .
  • (12) Humor measures assessed appreciation (including mirth, subjective ratings, and response sets), comprehension, and production, while competence measures included teacher ratings of classroom behavior, peer reputation, and achievement.
  • (13) He has a soft, almost hushed voice, glasses that press down on the tops of his ears, making them flop over like wings, and a frequent, mirthful smile.
  • (14) The news of Ramos’s remarks sparked mirth amongst the cybersecurity community, who began poking their own holes in the claims.
  • (15) The fact that this particular man has long been characterised as tremendously powerful only adds to the mirth.
  • (16) It is difficult to measure the effect of laughter and mirth on changing one's mindset, but in 12 months not a single instance of death of a child occurred resulting from diarrhea or malnutrition.
  • (17) A different order of difficulty across items, and a different profile of "mirth" responses to the items did, however, correlate with site of lesion.
  • (18) Gallingly, the elevation has also exposed him to the mirth of his old friend Richard Rogers , whose own life peerage he had previously enjoyed teasing.
  • (19) As Claudius said in Hamlet: “With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.” Weddings, to me, feel heavy with expectation, pregnant with emotion, saturated with hope, fear and hard-to-keep promises.
  • (20) To detect changes in these components during a mirthful laughter experience, the authors studied 10 healthy male subjects.