What's the difference between clan and clique?

Clan


Definition:

  • (n.) A tribe or collection of families, united under a chieftain, regarded as having the same common ancestor, and bearing the same surname; as, the clan of Macdonald.
  • (n.) A clique; a sect, society, or body of persons; esp., a body of persons united by some common interest or pursuit; -- sometimes used contemptuously.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Their chief conduits in Damascus have been leading members of the Assad clan, but not necessarily Bashar al-Assad himself.
  • (2) 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.
  • (3) Ukraine's real political split has always been between different industrial clans, whose placemen dominate parliament.
  • (4) I wasn't prepared for Madiba (his clan name) coming into my life, but now we make sure we spend time with each other because we were so lonely before.
  • (5) It was also, because it transcended family and clan interests and involved defining what the realm was, the starting point of the modern state.
  • (6) There are definitely elements of Clash of Clans in this Wild West-themed game, but it’s got a spark of originality too as you build your posse, explore the wild frontier and protect your town.
  • (7) Yamadayav's extended family has been involved in a bitter clan feud with Kadyrov, and represented one of the few sources of genuine opposition to the president inside the unstable Caucasus republic.
  • (8) They are victims of both Sicilian and Nigerian criminality.” For now, Nigerians and Sicilians live in peace with the Abuja clans at the service of Cosa Nostra.
  • (9) Similarly, at the town of Galiwinku the children of two deprived clans are involved almost exclusively.
  • (10) The Wu-Tang Clan’s 20th anniversary reunion certainly didn’t always seem like a foregone conclusion.
  • (11) Pressuring governments to combat corruption will not help if payoffs to mob bosses, clan chiefs, or warlords are needed to maintain social order.
  • (12) These are the only clans in eastern Arnhem Land without outstations on their homelands.
  • (13) And the game’s place in the ancestry of Clash of Clans is clear too, which may have been one reason people like me – a fraction of the latter game’s audience, admittedly – fell for Supercell’s game.)
  • (14) Wu-Tang Clan have already started taking pre-orders for A Better Tomorrow – which should not be confused with their "single-sale collector's item" Once Upon a Time in Shaolin – and have released a new single, Keep Watch .
  • (15) The donors and the UN agencies who will be represented at Thursday's London conference, who have spent decades working with discredited governments in Mogadishu, do not know which clan leaders to talk to.
  • (16) Its social structure was organised by family clan, and to this day, most local people have one of three surnames: Lu, Xian or Liang.
  • (17) Two key opposition cities, Deraa in the south, where the uprising began, and Homs near the Lebanese border, which has become the centre of the nine-month revolt, were heaving with demonstrators chanting anti-regime slogans and waving a national flag last flown before the Assad clan swept to power in Syria more than 40 years ago.
  • (18) Clash of Clans made the most money on iOS this year.
  • (19) The Wu-Tang Clan's last album, 8 Diagrams , was released in 2007.
  • (20) One of the elders, who was a senior leader of the Rhino clan, inducted us into his clan with a short ceremony followed by a long speech over the fire, which allowed us to be officially recognised as the first female Masai warriors.

Clique


Definition:

  • (v. i.) A narrow circle of persons associated by common interests or for the accomplishment of a common purpose; -- generally used in a bad sense.
  • (v. i.) To To associate together in a clannish way; to act with others secretly to gain a desired end; to plot; -- used with together.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Each movie group – Gone Girl, The Imitation Game, Selma, etc – sits defensively together, sort of like high-school cliques in the canteen of an 80s teen movie, and those proud, defiant smiles they managed to maintain for TV have long since wobbled away a bit.
  • (2) They just wanted the machine that would give them power as a clique.
  • (3) There were still quite a few Marxists at Oxford in those days – Terry Eagleton and his clique were seemingly bolted to the same table in the King’s Arms the entire time I  was an undergraduate – but while I was silly and naive enough to believe in the purifying, energising effects of violent revolution, I wasn’t obtuse enough to think of dialectical materialism as anything more than a powerful heuristic.
  • (4) Many street disputes are not gang or even clique related, but the climate of violence created by the gangs, with their ready access to arms, means that a Hobbesian, kill-or-be-killed mentality can afflict even the most minor altercations.
  • (5) However, the Socialist party – the successor to Militant Tendency – described the claims as “wholly inaccurate” and said they “reflect the terror of the rightwing clique that dominates the Labour party at the wave of enthusiasm Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign is generating”.
  • (6) We will build a union where members’ interests are always put first – not subordinated to the political machinations of a clique.
  • (7) Whether Podemos can balance the demands of its grassroots activists, who expect to shape policy, with the powerful influence of Iglesias and his clique of Complutense academics, remains one of the most challenging questions for the party’s future.
  • (8) There is a value that unites that vast majority of British people away from the small metropolitan clique, and that value is patriotism,” Nuttall has said.
  • (9) "For the sake of national unity and the development of stability in Tibetan regions, we must take a clear-cut stand and deepen the struggle against the Dalai clique."
  • (10) They won the European Championship with something to spare and, importantly, they appear to be free of the cliques and divisions that can exist when bringing together players from different clubs, and particularly when those clubs are bonded by mutual contempt in the manner of Barcelona and Real Madrid.
  • (11) And if you judge it by how it treated those who told it the truth, the BBC remains a dangerous organisation, run by a managerial clique that puts its own interest before honest reporting or, indeed, the best interests of the BBC.
  • (12) "It is not the king who is to blame," Hamza Mansour, the secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front (the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood), recently told Le Monde, "but the clique surrounding him."
  • (13) It quoted a Tibetan expert who said the "Dalai Lama clique" had "instigated and enticed" the men to self-immolate.
  • (14) Browder says his problem isn’t with Russia as such but with the powerful clique of ex-KGB spies who have grabbed the state.
  • (15) We strongly believe that the holders of Ukraine’s government debt must rethink the conditions for dealing with this country and realise that rather than helping, debt relief may mean a full amnesty for a corrupt clique who has brought the nation to its knees.
  • (16) In July, Russian banks allied to Putin's clique were sealed off from issuing bonds on Wall Street, only to issue them the next week in Frankfurt.
  • (17) Noland said: “It appears to be developing into a corrupt, opaque extraction-based economy common in central Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, which generates benefits for a small ruling clique and key regime constituencies, but does not deliver prosperity for the bulk of the population.” Beneath a tiny elite at the top, benefits are spread unequally, said Smith.
  • (18) In his first five minutes he name-checked Picasso, quoted a poem by the Russian dissident Osip Mandelstam – not, he hoped, any relation of Lord Mandelson – and raved about both the play Jerusalem, and the anarchic cabaret La Clique, a show he saw at the Roundhouse.
  • (19) Given this, isn't there some truth in the accusation that Falkirk was a case of one tightly connected clique facing off against another?
  • (20) It is actually quite difficult for a woman to get in as part of an Old Etonian clique.