What's the difference between clinging and clingy?

Clinging


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Cling

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The first stop in this arid place of poor farms and orchards clinging to the dry soil is Rafah, cut off by the border from its Palestinian counterpart.
  • (2) Feminism sometimes clings too hard to a sense of identity that always equates "female" with "underdog".
  • (3) Everton head to Wembley for the FA Cup semi-final on Saturday but whether Roberto Martínez clings on beyond that game is open to doubt.
  • (4) Their families are said be be distraught at the news and have been clinging to the hope their daughters would want to come home.
  • (5) Her husband, a government official, went straight back to work after being rescued from the roof of the town hall, where he survived by clinging on to the perimeter fence while 70 of his colleagues drowned.
  • (6) It's just Boris being Boris, we say, as if life were just one extended episode of Have I Got News for You Alternatively, there is the scenario remainers cling to.
  • (7) Although it remains unclear why he chose to place the muddled woman in a kitchen – clinging to her mug and surrounded by children's toys – as opposed to say, in a laboratory or a truck, he claims all the words were authentically spoken by "women in dozens of focus groups around the country", prior to being stitched together in this latest triumph for the fashionable, verbatim school of drama.
  • (8) Theresa May signals support for UK-EU membership deal Read more On Dave went, clinging to the inverse principle that the less you have to say, the more time you should spend saying it.
  • (9) Obama said then: They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
  • (10) From time to time I'd bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was a character but that world was riddled with half-cut, doped-up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn't especially register.
  • (11) As I type I can smell the nauseating scent of death that clings to me still.
  • (12) An orderly process of dealing with asylum claims at the earliest point would be infinitely preferable to desperate families laying siege to central European railway stations, risking their lives clinging on to vehicles at Calais or suffocating in vehicles transporting them across borders.
  • (13) Arsenal are clinging to the hope that, like Olivier Giroud, who returned as a goal-scoring substitute in the 2-1 loss to United weeks ahead of schedule after fracturing his tibia in late August, Wilshere could yet surprise people and make a speedy recovery.
  • (14) That Russian meeting appears to have been the key to Milosevic's surrender of power as Ivanov informed him that he would have no support from Moscow if he attempted to cling on.
  • (15) But it may help steer a few more people away from Starbucks in the direction of Costa or one of those small independent coffee shops, book shops, grocers (etc, etc) whom we should cherish while they cling on in the face of unfair competition.
  • (16) The union claims Four Seasons, the UK's second largest care home provider, is also "clinging on by its fingernails".
  • (17) Others are said to be clinging on to the idea that Ukip remains a convenient means of taking votes from the Tories (witness the surreally complacent words of the Labour frontbencher Angela Eagle: “I’m not as worried as some might be about Ukip’s appeal to Labour voters.
  • (18) Hadlow, the controller of BBC2 since 2008 and BBC4 before that, is engaging company with a frustrating tendency to cling to the fence, at least in public.
  • (19) They cling to the realm, or the gods, or love: illusions.
  • (20) The only effect on postnatal development of the central nervous system (CNS) was a small transient change in neuromotor clinging ability of female offspring.

Clingy


Definition:

  • (a.) Apt to cling; adhesive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Such patients are also reported to exhibit heightened levels of social cohesion, the tendency to become interpersonally "clingy".
  • (2) Mona Zaghrout of the YMCA lists typical responses to trauma among children: "Nightmares, lack of concentration, reluctance to go to school, clinginess, unwillingness to sleep alone, insomnia, aggressive behaviour, regressive behaviour, bed-wetting.
  • (3) We didn't have a brother or sister to play with, so, therefore, we must be a bit like Casper the Friendly Ghost, wandering about asking random people if we can "keep them" while giving off the faint aura of desperation and clinginess.
  • (4) The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) guidelines, which have gone out for consultation , advise the likes of teachers and police officers that tantrums, excessive clinginess and being withdrawn are possible signs of abuse or neglect in children, particularly if they are out of character.
  • (5) We are conditioned to perform particular roles, as you see in families all the time: the unruly one, the caring one, the quiet one, the clingy one.
  • (6) "The portrayal of 'Sal' as a clingy and dishonest roommate is completely off the mark and makes me cringe," he writes.
  • (7) My mother would reach over my shoulder to turn the page if she felt I was lingering too long on pictures of muscle Marys in clingy trunks.
  • (8) Fashions up to that point, while often clingy and form revealing, covered up most of a woman's skin.
  • (9) I've been told by those who have been the targets of my affection that I'm too clingy.
  • (10) After six paragraphs singing her praises, it finally revealed that the actor’s name was George Clooney – “probably a nice man, but seems to be a bit clingy, as since she met him it’s hard to find a photo or footage of Amal without him hanging around in the background”.

Words possibly related to "clingy"