What's the difference between bluster and smug?

Bluster


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To blow fitfully with violence and noise, as wind; to be windy and boisterous, as the weather.
  • (v. i.) To talk with noisy violence; to swagger, as a turbulent or boasting person; to act in a noisy, tumultuous way; to play the bully; to storm; to rage.
  • (v. t.) To utter, or do, with noisy violence; to force by blustering; to bully.
  • (n.) Fitful noise and violence, as of a storm; violent winds; boisterousness.
  • (n.) Noisy and violent or threatening talk; noisy and boastful language.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) North Korea's blustering defiance at the annual US-South Korean exercises masks just a little fear that they could easily be turned into an all-out attack, and seems to work on the principle that the more you shout, the safer you will be.
  • (2) For all the bluster from Coalition MPs, farming communities will lose out.
  • (3) Ed Balls's bluster is confused and hypocritical when the reality is he'd do it all again," Fallon said.
  • (4) 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.
  • (5) At which point restraint becomes as powerful as the Seeds' ravenous beer-hall bluster; a ten-minute Stagger Lee is a masterclass in tension and drama, Cave balancing precariously on the crowd barrier with audience members holding him up by the boot-heel as he leans out to sing his tale of a deviant killer directly into the eyes of a hypnotised girl in white hoisted on someone's shoulders.
  • (6) Cameron added that recent warnings from banks such as Lloyds and RBS, and from firms such as BP and Shell proved that the economic and financial risks of independence were not bluff and bluster or bullying.
  • (7) A steady rise in the yes vote in recent opinion polls also established that voters did not buy "the bluff and bluster" of those opposed to independence.
  • (8) He has a pretty easy ride if he’s prepared but if he tries to bluster it could hurt him,” Mann said.
  • (9) Terre'Blanche's credibility as a political leader collapsed after the anti-black threats voiced by the extreme white right proved to be little more than bluster.
  • (10) But for all Clegg's bluster, he's not setting tough enough tests for the changes the prime minister must make to his NHS plans.
  • (11) This is nothing but bluster and hot air with precisely nothing achieved.
  • (12) The book has action, but it also has a point; it has pathos, where the film is all comic-action bluster.
  • (13) Besides the election of Trump, with all his attendant nationalist bluster and populist economic and trade pronouncements, Brexit has seen the UK turn its back on Europe on the back of economic and immigration concerns, and closer to home, the 2016 federal election culminated in the resurgence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party.
  • (14) While many fiscal conservatives view Huckabee warily, he has a solid social conservative thread and a folksy charm that would pair well with Trump’s big city bluster.
  • (15) Underneath all the showbiz bluster, he was an old softie.
  • (16) From all accounts, he was a bully, a manipulator, and a blustering, pessimistic, emotionally dishonest man.
  • (17) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hillary Clinton criticizes the ‘bluster and bigotry’ of the Republican campaign Before Tuesday’s elections, Clinton was ahead of Sanders by 673 to 477 pledged delegates and – with the vast majority of super delegates too – was nearly halfway to securing the 2,383 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.
  • (18) On the other hand, if Iran is dragging its feet and compliance problems have arisen, that would make it much easier for a new president to walk away from the deal.” Einhorn also expressed doubts that a Republican president, for all of the bluster among the current crop of candidates, would actually turn his back on an agreement if it appeared to be working.
  • (19) I think I have made a lot of sacrifices,” he blustered.
  • (20) In the past, Zevon has occasionally been guilty of LA sludge-rock bluster, but these songs flash back to the rough simplicity of his original inspiration, Bob Dylan.

Smug


Definition:

  • (a.) Studiously neat or nice, especially in dress; spruce; affectedly precise; smooth and prim.
  • (v. t.) To make smug, or spruce.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Anne Hathaway at least tried to sing and dance and preen along to the goings on, but Franco seemed distant, uninterested and content to keep his Cheshire-cat-meets-smug smile on display throughout."
  • (2) What's more, his genial stiffness and shy self-awareness give him a kind of awkward dignity compared to the preening smugness of Cruz.
  • (3) It might be worth looking at how others do it, and not smugly concluding that the public likes the NHS the way it is.
  • (4) He is far too astute an analyst of comedy to be unaware of the danger of looking smug and there were sufficient layers of irony and knowing jokes within jokes for the conceit to work.
  • (5) I smiled smugly – there’s nothing like praise from a kindred spirit.
  • (6) And he provided the catalyst that improved the lot of the player in what had become an exceedingly smug game.
  • (7) Our political class is indeed the pinnacle of smug regurgitation.
  • (8) Meanwhile, eco-triumphalists will witter smugly about how the ban will save - what was it again?
  • (9) He had to do more than opt out of the yah-boo , smug sixth-form wordplay of the House of Commons.
  • (10) Dave meanwhile lapsed into his shrill Bullingdon Club persona; the dividing line between self confidence and smugness is gossamer thin for the prime minister.
  • (11) Before a ferociously red crowd, in which the Australian fans, scattered throughout the stadium in little blobs of yellow, struggled to assert themselves in any meaningful way, the Chileans started with their customary disregard for defence, a line of five attackers purring forward with gushing, almost smug intent.
  • (12) Softness and tenderness, wistful ironies” he conceded as blindspots, describing Motown as mere “foot fodder” but having a lot of time for relatively minor practitioners such as Joe Tex , who he saw as “hugely smug” but with “great charm and inventiveness”.
  • (13) The most likely comment to exasperate Serwotka is the assertion that they're fat cats, a smug drain on the public purse: of 301,000 members "we've got 30,000 people earning just above the minimum wage, 100,000 earning less than £15,000 [the average civil service salary is £22,000].
  • (14) Maurice Vassie Deighton, North Yorkshire • If recent history is anything to go by, then Jeremy Corbyn has every chance of being elected prime minister ( Why smart Tories should not be smug about Corbyn , 27 July).
  • (15) Among other things, the novels work as a meditation on America's Calvinist conscience, its strengths and blindnesses, and the way that it moved from fanaticism to smugness in the century after the civil war.
  • (16) It satirises the smug, modernist home-owners often seen in the pages of US interiors magazine Dwell.
  • (17) This kind of smugness is always given short shrift by the elderly.
  • (18) Feminism , according to Moran, is "simply the belief that women should be as free as men – however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be.
  • (19) With incredible complacency, politicians from both sides of parliament basked in the glory and reacted smugly when the US and the eurozone hit a brick wall.
  • (20) They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism.