What's the difference between busybody and meddlesome?

Busybody


Definition:

  • (n.) One who officiously concerns himself with the affairs of others; a meddling person.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) If that's the case, then doesn't logic suggest that we should be proposing to Lord Justice Leveson a new body which would offer a plausible and effective alternative to all these busybodies who are just dying to interfere.
  • (2) She got rather cross with Simon Schama recently for what she saw, in his writings about early Dutch culture, as a faulty sense of Calvinism - "the dear old song of Renaissance Europe" as she calls it - and confronted him on a panel in New York for characterising Calvinists as a bunch of joyless busybodies.
  • (3) "Some people might know me as the 'busybody mother', that kind of thing," she says.
  • (4) In the latter, he played Martin Bryce, a fussy busybody unusually preoccupied with law and order.
  • (5) Sally’s transformation from snobby busybody to the knicker factory’s answer to Hillary Clinton is now complete and she always has one eye on boosting her political profile.
  • (6) By extension, Dawson argues, that applies to our views on parenting too: we don't value it adequately, and tie ourselves in knots, with those inclined to blame the parents for the actions of anti-social children simultaneously arguing that parenting is intrinsic and the state and the professionals should lay off and take their busybodying views on compulsory nursery rhymes with them.
  • (7) Prosecutors have portrayed the defendant as a neighbourhood busybody and an overzealous vigilante who profiled, pursued and shot Martin as he walked through the development to the house of his father's friend in a hooded top.
  • (8) But do be aware that random people will continually harangue you with probing, personal questions, like, “What are you up to at the moment?” It is perfectly acceptable to respond to these busybodies with a casual, “Oh, I’ve just got back from India.” Even if you got back two years ago and you told everyone it was travelling but it was actually a holiday and you came home early because you got touched up in a market.
  • (9) Facebook Twitter Pinterest George Osborne says boosting aid, defeating smuggling gangs and tackling the conflict in Syria are key in solving the migrant crisis, and offering asylum to refugees is only one part of the solution The all-powerful busybodies of Brussels are relatively impotent when it comes to immigration.
  • (10) The all-powerful busybodies of Brussels are relatively impotent when it comes to immigration The seven countries of central Europe and the Baltic are being asked to take fewer than 30,000.
  • (11) The "localism" agenda, close cousin to the Big Society, is forgotten; instead, war is declared on those supposedly parochial town hall busybodies who stand in the way of growth and investment.
  • (12) The Spectator rather cruelly called him "the Mary Whitehouse of our day", as if the religious debate had turned him into a busybody bore.
  • (13) And yet the latest batch of public health busybodies, Action on Sugar , think differently.
  • (14) This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely,” he wrote.
  • (15) "This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely," he wrote.
  • (16) Like the last village in Gaul that resists the occupying forces of the Romans, there will always be a group of smokers who do so not only because it can relax one wonderfully (think of all the soldiers who smoke) but precisely because it enrages an enormous number of busybodies.
  • (17) She made the cover of the New York Post, which apparently had a reporter or stringer or citizen journalist or busybody in the park at the time.
  • (18) This act is a powerful mechanism for shrinking government, amid Pickles' ritual abuse of "bureaucrats" and "town hall busybodies".
  • (19) Just another boring busybody telling people how to live.
  • (20) In any case, regulations are for busybodies, especially in areas as controversial as climate change and air quality.

Meddlesome


Definition:

  • (a.) Given to meddling; apt to interpose in the affairs of others; officiously intrusive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Then I was seen as someone who, when she was in power, didn’t want anything to do with them.” She was portrayed as meddlesome and pushy, with an undue influence on both Hollande’s policies and his wardrobe.
  • (2) What worries me is that all this meddlesome injunctioneering could soon threaten the fabric of reason itself, causing a black hole of logic that sucks everything in the universe through to neverwhere.
  • (3) In a memorable exchange, Senator Angus King of Maine asked: “When a president of the United States in the Oval Office says something like ‘I hope’ or ‘I suggest’ or ‘would you,’ do you take that as a directive?” Comey replied: “Yes, it rings in my ear as kind of, ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’” – a reference to King Henry’s II’s kiss of death to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket.
  • (4) Professionals, unionised workers and meddlesome politicians need to stand aside and allow the system to become rational, transaction-oriented and incentivised.
  • (5) Their fathers tended to be away from home, and mothers were conspicuously overprotective and meddlesome.
  • (6) Even when David Cameron swore he would not introduce "any more meddlesome top-down restructuring" he pushed through another.
  • (7) He dumped Every Child Matters: it was, he noted in February 2012, "meddlesome".
  • (8) No one could be accused of "meddlesome" intervention in the life of Daniel Pelka.
  • (9) The size of the hammer taken to Defra revealed more about the government’s approach than simply its antipathy to the meddlesome pursuit of environmental protection.
  • (10) 1 example of "meddlesome medicine" is the widespread use of "therapeutic abortion."
  • (11) While this sort of front office juggling and decision-making waffling isn't entirely uncommon and not really too newsworthy, Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix reported details that made Pera's recent behavior as being less meddlesome and more just flat out eccentric : • Pera wanted more influence in deciding the playing time for certain players, particularly fourth-year power forward Ed Davis.
  • (12) Simon Callow stars as Godfrey, the mischievously meddlesome narrator, while Enfield plays a sinister creep who seduces grieving widows, via tip-offs from a corrupt undertaker, in order to steal their life's savings.
  • (13) Minor surgery is usually meddlesome and often followed by local recurrence which is hard to control.
  • (14) At 64 years of age, the lazy and meddlesome Cloquet stopped operating and writing.
  • (15) Laparotomy is unnecessary and potentially meddlesome.
  • (16) It's a useful reminder, if one were needed, that there's no technique too mendacious, too meddlesome or too unpleasant for people who think other woman's reproductive organs are de facto their business.