What's the difference between calamity and ruin?

Calamity


Definition:

  • (n.) Any great misfortune or cause of misery; -- generally applied to events or disasters which produce extensive evil, either to communities or individuals.
  • (n.) A state or time of distress or misfortune; misery.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But if nothing changes, nothing will change, and these calamities will be with us once more.
  • (2) 18) Dallas Cowboys Last season: 8-8 Needs: Offensive line, safety, defensive tackle, running back Pick: Kenny Vaccaro, safety, Texas Tony Romo often carries the can for the Cowboys' offensive calamities, but the truth is that not many quarterbacks look great when they are running for their lives.
  • (3) They did not look like Stoke, exactly, they kept the ball on the floor a bit more than their opponents and did not go backwards quite so much, but in the first half at least there were two sides short of attacking ideas and genuine penetration and for either to score a goal it seemed likely a dead-ball routine or a defensive calamity would have to be involved.
  • (4) QPR appear to be on the verge of calamity at any point in defence.
  • (5) SJ Closs Edinburgh He is the Daffy Duck of politics – confident and self-satisfied, leading to calamity; then he pops up again, unabashed • As a fellow economist I fully endorse Larry Elliott’s demolition of Tory party assertions that all is well for the UK’s growing economy, and that Britain is paying its way ( The Tories’ ticking economic timebomb , 20 April).
  • (6) This system has now been refined to be used prospectively during the management stage of a calamity.
  • (7) Those who backed the wars in Iraq and Libya feel tainted by the bloodshed in the calamities that followed.
  • (8) US and Canadian oil policies, especially the tar sands schemes in Alberta, would increase the chances of global calamities, the imposters told their audience - but reassured them that the industry could keep "fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people who died into oil.
  • (9) But they should be manageable and worth taking for the wider economic gains, notably averting what might have been an economic calamity.
  • (10) The community's children have been especially vulnerable to these calamities.
  • (11) The 2007 campaign was marked by dirty tricks charges against the Huhne camp by the man he (allegedly) dubbed "Calamity Clegg".
  • (12) I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and the people of Vanuatu that the global community give a lending hand in responding to these very current calamities that have struck us,” he said.
  • (13) The Crystal World is surely Ballard's most gorgeous calamity: apocalypse not as abolition but as transfiguration.
  • (14) By calculating the medical severity index, which is the product of the casualty load and the severity of the incident, and comparing this figure with the available total capacity of the medical services, which is the medical rescue capacity, the medical transport capacity and the hospital treatment capacity, the dispatcher at the control center can fairly quickly and precisely identify if a calamity is to be regarded as a disaster or not and if the region can cope with the situation.
  • (15) In Scotland, meanwhile, Labour has suffered a devastating calamity.
  • (16) But if the political will existed, calamity could be avoided with a fairly modest increase in the budget allocation .
  • (17) The disease that has brought these calamities to the pretty hills of Jinotega, in Nicaragua's central highlands, is new to most of the farmers I meet.
  • (18) Beckett, whose influence on Walsh is palpable, and Pinter would recognise that idea that beneath the surface of everyday life lays a gaping black hole: indeed Pinter from his youth frequently quoted a phrase of Cardinal Newman that creation is a vast "aboriginal calamity".
  • (19) Air brakes that would have prevented the disaster failed because they were powered by an engine that was shut down by firefighters as they dealt with a fire shortly before the calamity occurred, the head of the railway that operated the train said on Monday.
  • (20) The droughts will be far worse than the one in California – or those seen in ancient times, such as the calamity that led to the decline of the Anasazi civilizations in the 13 th century, the researchers said.

Ruin


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of falling or tumbling down; fall.
  • (n.) Such a change of anything as destroys it, or entirely defeats its object, or unfits it for use; destruction; overthrow; as, the ruin of a ship or an army; the ruin of a constitution or a government; the ruin of health or hopes.
  • (n.) That which is fallen down and become worthless from injury or decay; as, his mind is a ruin; especially, in the plural, the remains of a destroyed, dilapidated, or desolate house, fortress, city, or the like.
  • (n.) The state of being dcayed, or of having become ruined or worthless; as, to be in ruins; to go to ruin.
  • (n.) That which promotes injury, decay, or destruction.
  • (n.) To bring to ruin; to cause to fall to pieces and decay; to make to perish; to bring to destruction; to bring to poverty or bankruptcy; to impair seriously; to damage essentially; to overthrow.
  • (v. i.) To fall to ruins; to go to ruin; to become decayed or dilapidated; to perish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Because they generally have to be positioned on hills to get the maximum benefits of the wind, some complain that they ruin the landscape.
  • (2) Even regional allies disagree with American priorities about Isis, Biddle noted, which is why Turkey continues to bomb Kurds and Saudi Arabia and the UAE arm groups around the region , most notably in Syria but also in the ruins of Yemen .
  • (3) It trickled back to me somehow that, ‘Goddammit, Johnny Depp’s ruining the film!
  • (4) A procedure is described for the rapid determination of putrascine, spermine and spermidine in ruine and whole blood.
  • (5) Hitchcock's attempts to keep Hedren in a gilded cage arguably ruined her career.
  • (6) Conference, five years ago this motion would have ruined my life.
  • (7) But illegal action will only ruin any chance of dialogue with Tehran.
  • (8) The lid is fiddly to fit on to the cup, and smells so strongly of silicone it almost entirely ruins the taste of the coffee if you don’t remove it.
  • (9) In Niki Savva’s book The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin Destroyed Their Own Government, Credlin has even been compared to Wallis Simpson, a deeply weird analogy.
  • (10) "While the country is sunk in misery, families are ruined and children are growing up in poverty, this guy turns up and we pay €91m for him.
  • (11) Anuraj Sivarajah, online editor of the newspaper, said he was very clear who was to blame for the attacks and arson that has brought the newspaper near financial ruin.
  • (12) In 1995 8,000 people whose lives were ruined by the Montserrat volcano settled in Britain.
  • (13) They belong to the people who built Choquequirao, one of the most remote Inca settlements in the Andes, and were stashed here by the archaeologists who, over the past 20 years, have been slowly freeing the ruins from the cloud forest.
  • (14) Even the avuncular governor of the Irish central bank, Professor Patrick Honohan, was forced to admit that pumping up to €70bn of taxpayers' money into the ruined banks "doesn't score highly on fairness" when he announced the fifth bailout on Thursday.
  • (15) Three thousand cheers for Will Self ( Has English Heritage ruined Stonehenge?
  • (16) But Denton’s attempts to apply extreme openness to others could cost the ruin of his company.
  • (17) His torturers accused him of passing on to British officials information about previous beatings at the hands of state officials and other human rights abuses, to ruin diplomatic relations between the two countries, he said.
  • (18) As Google states, it is definitely in the company’s best interest to get its first smartglass customers to behave, as “breaking the rules or being rude will not get businesses excited about Glass and will ruin it for other Explorers”.
  • (19) The notion that Gleeson has lurched from one disaster to another, ruining everything from the Coen brothers' remake of True Grit to Richard Curtis's romcom About Time , seems a pretty unique interpretation of his burgeoning career as a versatile character actor.
  • (20) But there was scepticism over whether the more radical elements on either side would obey the ceasefire, and concern in Kiev and western capitals that the truce would effectively "freeze" the conflict and give Moscow de facto control over the disputed chunk of eastern Ukraine that has been ruined by war this summer.