What's the difference between brutal and vicious?

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.

Vicious


Definition:

  • (a.) Characterized by vice or defects; defective; faulty; imperfect.
  • (a.) Addicted to vice; corrupt in principles or conduct; depraved; wicked; as, vicious children; vicious examples; vicious conduct.
  • (a.) Wanting purity; foul; bad; noxious; as, vicious air, water, etc.
  • (a.) Not correct or pure; corrupt; as, vicious language; vicious idioms.
  • (a.) Not well tamed or broken; given to bad tricks; unruly; refractory; as, a vicious horse.
  • (a.) Bitter; spiteful; malignant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Los Angeles were relentless in their vicious pursuit of a game-tying goal on Wednesday, bidding to send Game 4 into overtime.
  • (2) But when in mid-October two of the artists received death threats, the menaces were widely reported and rekindled debate, prompting vicious, anti-Muslim comments on Danish talk shows.
  • (3) When he attacked New York, his vicious crusade was as much against skyscrapers as it was against western values and the US.
  • (4) A vicious feud playing out within Uzbekistan's ruling family took a new twist on Monday , when prosecutors announced that the clan's most flamboyant member faces charges of involvement in mafia-style corruption.
  • (5) This was evident just this week when, as an example, a young woman in San Francisco was viciously killed by a five-time deported Mexican with a long criminal record, who was forced back into the United States because they didn’t want him in Mexico.
  • (6) Each of these reactions can increase the perception of chest pain, contributing to a vicious cycle that exacerbates both the chest pain and the anxiety.
  • (7) This vicious circle should be broken rather by finding optimal conditions than by a middle course determined by experimental requirements, economical frames and general notions about what may be good for the animal.
  • (8) In spite of the relatively large sample and the given number of variables the problem of the vicious circle might occur.
  • (9) Recent data are cited for the proposition that these changes constitute a closed pathogenetic concatenation creating a vicious circle.
  • (10) When there is upheaval within China’s own borders – riots, protests, vicious political power struggles – hardly a sniff of it will be found in the pages of the country’s heavily-controlled press.
  • (11) According to the International Crisis Group , tensions within and between the two major political parties, competing claims to the presidency between northern and Niger Delta politicians and along religious lines, along with inadequate preparations by the electoral commission and apparent bias by security agencies, suggest the country is heading toward a volatile and vicious electoral contest.
  • (12) A vicious circle with the increased resistance as the key factor can be identified.
  • (13) This vicious cycle could be interrupted by segmental epidural anesthesia with procaine as well as by blockade of sympathoexcitation at the central nervous level with clonidine in anesthetized dogs.
  • (14) This is in stark comparison to the gruesome, vicious suffering that he inflicted on his two victims – and the lifetime of suffering he has caused their family.” Wood was executed for shooting to death Debra Dietz, his former girlfriend, and her father, Eugene Dietz, in Tucson in 1989.
  • (15) Spicer, who so viciously attacked the press on Saturday, had to hurriedly walk back the comments of his boss when Trump, during an interview with the Washington Post before the inauguration, promised “insurance for everybody”.
  • (16) Using mathematical models of the population dynamics of T helper cells, HIV and other pathogens we address three facets of the interactions between HIV and other pathogens: enhanced HIV replication due to immune stimulation by other pathogens; modified immune control of other pathogens due to immunosuppression by HIV; and the vicious circle formed by positive feedback between these two effects.
  • (17) Since the initially peaceful demonstrations against his regime began more than three years ago, he has proved himself, by turns, foolish, craven and vicious.
  • (18) He said US prisons were tough and safe enough to handle the most vicious al-Qaida terrorist suspects now held at Guantánamo.
  • (19) When Cruise announced last October that he was suing Bauer, his lawyer, Bert Fields, described the claim that the actor had deserted his daughter as a “vicious lie”.
  • (20) Meanwhile, people in poor countries are already battling its vicious storms.