What's the difference between brutal and nasty?

Brutal


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to a brute; as, brutal nature.
  • (a.) Like a brute; savage; cruel; inhuman; brutish; unfeeling; merciless; gross; as, brutal manners.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The arrest of the Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian and his journalist wife, Yeganeh Salehi, as well as a photographer and her partner, is a brutal reminder of the distance between President Hassan Rouhani’s reforming promises and his willingness to act.
  • (2) The analysis of the causes of hunger current in the 1970's can be summarized somewhat brutally as follows.
  • (3) Their brutality seems to have been fairly even-handed, or if it wasn't, the men surely suffered enough not to be presented as the winners of the atrocity.
  • (4) It hasn't been so exposed to the brutal learning culture Scotland Yard has been through with cases like Stephen Lawrence and Victoria Climbié.
  • (5) My whole world was turned upside down by the brutality of it.
  • (6) The Florida senator said: “This simplistic notion that ‘leave Assad there because he’s a brutal killer, but he’s not as bad as what’s going to follow him’ is a fundamental and simplistic and dangerous misunderstanding of the reality of the region.” It’s unclear though how much the actual debate about policy between the two senators stood out from the political carnival surrounding them.
  • (7) "They have a retaliatory doctrine," Salah argued of the police, whose brutality was a major cause of Egypt's 2011 uprising , but who have become more popular after backing Morsi's overthrow.
  • (8) Comic writing can be a brutal, unforgiving business, yet it can produce great and multi-layered prose, combining comedy, pathos and satire.
  • (9) "It's horrible and brutal to be that far back and searching for those gears and they're not there," O'Hare admitted.
  • (10) The Shah's secret police – Savak – became increasingly brutal, ultimately detaining without trial and torturing tens of thousands of Iranian citizens.
  • (11) These are the first western depictions of our animals, and what they represent are the inception of the specific cultural politics which your nation forced on my continent, its land and its people with unhesitating colonial brutality.
  • (12) Coming shortly after the regime's successful third nuclear weapons test, Rodman's public declaration that he was Kim's "friend for life ", and the young premier's ability to parade his western visitors on state media, angered critics who argued that the country's ghastly poverty and brutal human rights violations were inadequately reflected.
  • (13) The pro-free-market newspaper soon fell victim to brutal market forces.
  • (14) Zhang Gaoping, 47, told state media that he and his nephew were subject to seven days of brutal interrogation before trial – sleep deprivation, starvation, cigarette burns.
  • (15) Onset is generally brutal, as in acute enteritis or an extradigestive infection (ENT...) but persists, or else, more often, the syndrome appears insidiously over several days.
  • (16) As the brutality of the crackdown increased, there were reports of some small-scale defections within the Syrian army.
  • (17) Police said the brutal injuries to the boy clearly caused his death and investigators were not looking for anyone else.
  • (18) If so, they will be more jihadist, sectarian, brutal and anti-western when they take Damascus.
  • (19) Concentrate on the way he constructs the space of an interior or orchestrates a sensual camera movement that he invented himself - the camera gliding on unseen tracks in one direction while uncannily panning in another direction - and you perceive how each Dreyer film almost brutally reconstructs the universe rather than accepting it as a familiar given.
  • (20) Everything that was, is more: brutality, injustice, poverty, anger; but also clarity, knowledge, understanding and, possibly, determination.

Nasty


Definition:

  • (superl.) Offensively filthy; very dirty, foul, or defiled; disgusting; nauseous.
  • (superl.) Hence, loosely: Offensive; disagreeable; unpropitious; wet; drizzling; as, a nasty rain, day, sky.
  • (superl.) Characterized by obcenity; indecent; indelicate; gross; filthy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) How does it stack up against the competition – and are there any nasties in the small print?
  • (2) Admirably, Clinton kept her cool throughout, particularly Trump when spoke over her to call her “such a nasty woman”.
  • (3) He wanted to stay on longer than the traditional retirement age but became involved in a nasty spat with the then-chairman, Peter Sutherland.
  • (4) It is the latest attack on the government from the Hungarian economist, whose previous criticism of David Cameron's "nasty" looking restrictions on benefits for foreigners led the angry prime minister to lodge a formal complaint.
  • (5) Protesters waved banners with slogans such as “Special relationship, just say no” and “Nasty women unite”.
  • (6) The examples I have quoted are the tip of a very large and very nasty iceberg.
  • (7) In short, it is alleged that under his rule Sri Lanka is becoming a nasty, authoritarian quasi-rogue banana republic.
  • (8) Patterson agrees that it’s all much more controlled now, but she also wonders whether at times the media can be too negative, doomy, and sometimes downright nasty.
  • (9) And I’m sorry, that will come before any internal party-political issue and I think I should be able to adopt that position without being attacked, without being subject to a nasty troll-form of politics.” On Tuesday the prime minister, David Cameron, promised to publish a comprehensive strategy on Syria in the form of a written response to a report by the foreign affairs select committee, which concluded that the government had failed to make the case for extending airstrikes.
  • (10) Al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s leading centre of Islamic learning, called on Muslims to “ignore the nasty frivolity” of the latest edition.
  • (11) He was followed by Theresa May, who 13 years ago had warned that many voters thought the Conservatives were the “nasty party”, but who now pledged to clamp down on the rights of asylum seekers, and renewed her commitment to cut net migration to below 100,000 in terms so harsh that she was widely condemned even by her allies.
  • (12) I think it probably gave me a sense of self and self-protection that has been very useful, and I possibly have had less nasty moments than a lot of other women.
  • (13) Dr Rosemary Gillespie was the object of a “nasty, vindictive and sustained campaign of bullying” from her second day in the job at the UK’s biggest HIV charity, the tribunal heard.
  • (14) It had a “flat, nasty” ring to it, she says, which she has since “analysed like a Rubik’s cube; I have turned it every which way.
  • (15) Updated at 2.10pm BST 1.47pm BST Over to America, where the latest productivity figures confirm that the US economy took a nasty jolt over the winter, when bad weather gripped the country.
  • (16) It doesn't have to be bloody, it doesn't have to be nasty, but it does have to be fought."
  • (17) That was the one surprise in the budget – apart from the fine print of the nasties.
  • (18) Because the nastiness on our doorstep has piled too high for too long, and I just want to get out of the house.
  • (19) Southampton 3-0 Vitesse | Europa League third qualifying round match report Read more Even more damagingly for West Ham, they lost Enner Valencia to a potentially nasty knee injury in the first half after he caught his leg in the turf.
  • (20) They orginally had lofty ambitions of talking about the economy but since they have lost that argument so catastrophically, they have reached for the Ukip playbook to create fictitious stories to scare people about immigrants and release video nasties about Turkish people”.