What's the difference between capricious and petulant?

Capricious


Definition:

  • (a.) Governed or characterized by caprice; apt to change suddenly; freakish; whimsical; changeable.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The production of vocal sound is not capricious, it follows certain laws many of which are not known.
  • (2) Yet beneath the facade of implacable command was a moody, capricious man with a strained marriage: while he was in India, his wife Edwina had allegedly conducted an affair with the Indian politician Nehru.
  • (3) In one undisclosed court document in Kenya, seen by the Guardian, BAT’s lawyers demand the country’s high court “quash in its entirety” a package of anti-smoking regulations and rails against what it calls a “capricious” tax plan.
  • (4) The individual number of pathological scores showed a decrease already within the first treatment week and a further decrease by the end of the trial, especially for the items of capriciousness, obstinacy, irritability and restlessness.
  • (5) The rains in Katine sub-county in rural Uganda have been capricious all year, beyond the control even of such a faithful community as this.
  • (6) Degree of compliance with dietary advice, especially of the pregnant woman with a capricious appetite, is understandably difficult to assess.
  • (7) Opportunistic infections are increasingly becoming a problem in cancer patients amongst whom infection with Nocardia species is particularly difficult to detect due to the capricious natural history of the disease.
  • (8) Ashley can be capricious but unless he has a dramatic change of heart, the manager will have the chance to start winning back hearts and minds against Hull.
  • (9) Gambians had come to expect surprises from their leader – cruel, violent and capricious in power – just not ones that set the whole nation dancing in the streets and sent shockwaves of joy and inspiration across the continent.
  • (10) She has played middling singers and capricious interns, dancers, dreamers and damsels in distress, and she has done so with such ease and abandon that the actor and her alter egos have a tendency to blur.
  • (11) Antimicrobial susceptibility testing is somewhat capricious in part from the marked effect of inoculum size in some circumstances.
  • (12) That needs to be taken into consideration.” Philipp Mißfelder, foreign policy spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union, said: “I think deportations and extraditions to countries that have the death penalty are very problematic.” The Berlin judiciary should under no circumstances allow itself to become a willing tool of Cairo's capricious regime Franziska Brantner, Green party Egypt accuses both Qatar and al-Jazeera of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which was branded a terrorist organisation after the military deposed the president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013.
  • (13) Detailed, within-subjects Golgi analyses of regional differences in cerebellar Purkinje cell dendritic development are impractical due to the capriciousness of that technique.
  • (14) HBFP technique is capricious and the differentiation step should be controlled stringently; ethanolic picric acid, therefore, is recommended as a differentiation fluid.
  • (15) And in part, as Murray staggered about indiscriminately high-fiving at the end, there was a sense that this has also been something of a rather mannered love story, at its centre Murray and that prim, capricious, but in the end compliantly adorable Wimbledon crowd.
  • (16) With De Jong not properly match fit, Vito Mannone remained under-employed but Sunderland's goalkeeper did save a capriciously curving shot from Tioté quite brilliantly.
  • (17) Having bowled out England in their second innings for 123, West Indies were required to make 192 to win the match and square the series and the expectation was that it would be a tough call for them, given the capricious nature of the pitch on the first two days, not least a second day in which 18 wickets fell, which is unprecedented for a Test match in Barbados.
  • (18) This bilingual city in the eastern “Maritime” Canadian province of New Brunswick had appeared the ideal venue for these teams but with dark rain clouds hovering in the humid skies and a capricious wind blowing, the residents of the French speaking suburb of Dieppe and English speaking Riverview had evidently decided to stay indoors.
  • (19) Zwiebel argues the bill would invite capricious litigation "that could be extremely harmful to some of the most important institutions in our community".
  • (20) However, the standards and essentials that are ultimately adopted must be applied uniformly and fairly and not in an arbitrary or capricious manner.

Petulant


Definition:

  • (a.) Forward; pert; insolent; wanton.
  • (a.) Capriciously fretful; characterized by ill-natured freakishness; irritable.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "This speaks volumes of Hamilton and his petulant behaviour.
  • (2) One of the stories that took hold about the Klebolds after the shooting was that they were rich, and that Dylan’s violent behaviour was an extreme version of a spoilt child’s petulance.
  • (3) If we’re going to do this groupthink [a blanket ban] I think it would smack of petulance.” Jones added: “I stand by what Tony Abbott said: it [Q&A] is a lefty lynch mob.
  • (4) For a man who can clearly dance, he tends to deliver with a petulant shrug rather than an enthusiastic bang.
  • (5) One expects tension between a government and charities that tell inconvenient truths, but this has become a notoriously fearful, petulant, and intolerant administration.
  • (6) Toby Young called her a "petulant prima donna" in the Telegraph, while Observer critic Robert McCrum wrote that, as "an ebullient and pioneering feminist publisher from the 1970s [it's] hardly a surprise that she should find herself unresponsive to Roth's lifelong subject: the adventures of the ordinary sexual [American] man".
  • (7) His latest show of petulance drew boos from a crowd largely sympathetic to his antics up to that point.
  • (8) Stuart Lancaster and his coaching team sat looking down at the floor when Owen Farrell received a yellow card 10 minutes from the end for an act of petulance that in part explained why England have failed to live up to the high standard set in the pool of death, perhaps in the hope of a sink hole opening up and taking them away.
  • (9) Croatia have won 4-0 due in no small part to the idiocy of Alexandre Song, who was sent off in the first off for a preposterous show of petulance.
  • (10) Goaded, taunted and tormented by the prosecution, Pistorius was perhaps his own worst enemy during cross-examination, suffering surprising memory lapses and appearing evasive, agitated, petulant and self-contradictory.
  • (11) With great power comes great responsibility, so Facebook , and other large technology companies like Google, Amazon and Netflix need to be watched, critiqued and regulated if necessary, just like any other corporation or petulant adolescent.
  • (12) A petulant Henry cursed wretched foreigners and launched his own Brexit by leaving the church of Rome.
  • (13) But that is not possible for as long as Assad remains in power without any timetable for his departure, and for as long as his security forces murder, torture, gas and bomb his own people.” Nigel Dodds, the deputy DUP leader, indicated he was likely to back airstrikes and issued a vicious assault on the Labour leadership, saying: “It’s the petulant, putrid response of the irresponsible revolutionary bedsit they barely seem to have clambered out of.
  • (14) Chris Bryant, the former minister for Europe and chairman of the parliamentary all-party Russia group, said in a statement: "Having visited the trial and seen for myself the farcical way in which it was being conducted, with ludicrous trumped up charges and a petulant martinet of a prosecutor, it is entirely predictable that [Khodorkovsky] has been found guilty."
  • (15) Pakistan authorities counter claim that, emboldened by countrywide instability and foreign support, Baloch feudal leaders have petulantly demanded ever more royalties.
  • (16) They see the protesters as petulant malcontents and repeat Trump’s accusation that some of them are surely getting paid to demonstrate.
  • (17) I give all my customers five stars except Nicholas, whom I give one star out of petulance at his laziness.
  • (18) She was vulnerable, touching, kindly, loving, wholly lacking in malice, occasionally petulant in a good cause, and demonstrated her lack of talent for guile whenever she entered upon some well-intentioned intrigue.
  • (19) Obama has responded with emotions rarely seen during his stoical administration: anger at “hysterical” politicians back home, sorrow at the thought of sending US troops into another Middle East war he fears would be unwinnable, and petulance in the face of those who question his resolve.
  • (20) He not only represents everything a DJ shouldn't be – obnoxious, petulant, unfunny, and so over-fond of his own horrible, squeaky voice that entire half-hours can pass without any music being played – he represents everything that's wrong with this country.