What's the difference between capricious and whim?

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.

Whim


Definition:

  • (n.) The European widgeon.
  • (n.) A sudden turn or start of the mind; a temporary eccentricity; a freak; a fancy; a capricious notion; a humor; a caprice.
  • (n.) A large capstan or vertical drum turned by horse power or steam power, for raising ore or water, etc., from mines, or for other purposes; -- called also whim gin, and whimsey.
  • (v. i.) To be subject to, or indulge in, whims; to be whimsical, giddy, or freakish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A group called Campaign for Houston , which led the opposition, described the ordinance as “an attack on the traditional family” designed for “gender-confused men who … can call themselves ‘women’ on a whim”.
  • (2) If we’re going to change the model, we can’t just do it on a whim of government or the people who design these courses.” What he does like about Think Ahead is that participants will be doing “proper social work”, even if, in his view, they will be unprepared for the task.
  • (3) The previous Ba’athist and Shia governments tried to deviate the Muslim generation from their path through their educational programmes that concord with their governments and political whims.
  • (4) Your whims are Benji's command, readers – tell us where to go!
  • (5) Instead it amounts to exploitation, decided at the whim of a Jobcentre Plus adviser."
  • (6) The only thing she wouldn't do was We Shall Overcome, too sacred to perform on a whim she tells me when I meet her later, besides which - and here she giggles - "we probably won't overcome.
  • (7) I’m probably the hardest bandleader to work for, but I do it for love.” His band have rehearsed around 300 songs, from which Prince can choose at whim, which makes playing live more fun that it used to be.
  • (8) But its purchase and use relies on satisfying personal whim, prejudice or educational fashion, not on considerations of educational efficiency.
  • (9) Journalists who work here are not part of the press pack who must always keep one eye looking over their shoulder at their proprietor’s political whims – on business, on taxation or the European Union.
  • (10) If your reforms are a matter of ideology, legacy, whim and faith, then, like many of your predecessors, you could simply say so, and leave "evidence" to people who mean it.
  • (11) During the local election campaign Farage has also jettisoned, seemingly on his whim, longstanding policies such as a flat rate of tax.
  • (12) The very things that give small charities their allure can also be their greatest limitations Having been managed by a founder in three out of my four major jobs, and working closely with one in the fourth, I have lived out all the symptoms: ad-hoc practices with no systems and processes, unilateral decisions at the whim of the founder, a resistance to professionalising and losing the personal touch, and a way of working that revolves entirely around one person because the assumption is that this immortal personality will be around forever.
  • (13) It isn’t a whim of Thea’s not to go back to the classroom.
  • (14) Significant peptide release occurred only when B15 was stimulated at high frequency or at lower frequencies with a relatively long burst duration (Whim and Lloyd, 1989).
  • (15) He has been right too often in this tournament for it to be down to random chance, to the whims of the gods and to be about anything but cold logic, a huge ego and a steely, steely nerve.
  • (16) We see it in the people who have forgotten their encounter with the Lord ... in those who depend completely on their here and now, on their passions, whims and manias, in those who build walls around themselves and become enslaved to the idols that they have built with their own hands.” 7) Being rivals or boastful.
  • (17) That’s before fuel, water, food and tips for the crew, who will cater to the guests’ every whim as the yacht hops from Sardinia to Monaco to Greece or, during the winter, the Caribbean.
  • (18) But while both of us were at their whim, I pointed out that it was he, not security, who had notified Special Branch.
  • (19) Yet the choice of who should be employed as counselors is based on little more than personal whims of decision makers.
  • (20) Martin Donnelly, permanent secretary of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), did not just wake up one morning and, on a whim, write a lengthy and carefully argued defence of the old Whitehall verities.