What's the difference between complain and grumble?

Complain


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To give utterance to expression of grief, pain, censure, regret. etc.; to lament; to murmur; to find fault; -- commonly used with of. Also, to creak or squeak, as a timber or wheel.
  • (v. i.) To make a formal accusation; to make a charge.
  • (v. t.) To lament; to bewail.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In the ketamine group, 36% of the patients complained of unpleasant dreams.
  • (2) Sewel is also recorded complaining about the level of appearance allowances at the House of Lords .
  • (3) A case is presented of a 35-year-old woman who was brought to the emergency service by ambulance complaining of vomiting for 7 days and that she could not hear well because she was 'worn out'.
  • (4) Because they generally have to be positioned on hills to get the maximum benefits of the wind, some complain that they ruin the landscape.
  • (5) The matter is now in the hands of the Guernsey police and the law officers.” One resident who is a constant target of the paper and has complained to police, Rosie Guille, said the allegations had a “huge impact on morale” on the island.
  • (6) Unions have complained about the process for Chinese-backed companies to bring overseas workers to Australia for projects worth at least $150m, because the memorandum of understanding says “there will be no requirement for labour market testing” to enter into an investment facilitation arrangements (IFA).
  • (7) The degree of discomfort was slightly greater in women who complained of breast tenderness within three days prior to the mammogram but was not strongly related to age, menstrual status, or week of the menstrual cycle.
  • (8) Lofgren complains that " the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today ".
  • (9) TGI was present in high titres in all five patients who complained about recurrent goitre.
  • (10) Hyperprolactinemia, hypogonadotropinism, and subnormal plasma testosterone were found in a 65-year-old patient who had an enlarged sella turcica, complained of fatigue, and addmitted to decreased sexual interest and potency.
  • (11) Fairly frequently the patients complained about mucosal dryness and sporadically about dyspeptic symptoms, but these symptoms were not disturbing the course of the treatment.
  • (12) A forty-four-year-old woman with Takayasu's arteritis and involvement of the aortic arch and its main branches complained of precordial pain on effort.
  • (13) The £1m fine, proposed during the Leveson inquiry into press standards, was designed to demonstrate how seriously the industry was taking lessons learned after the failure of the Press Complains Commission tto investigate phone hacking at the News of the World.
  • (14) That was what the earlier debate over “currency wars” – when emerging markets complained about being inundated by financial inflows from the US – was all about.
  • (15) These results are likely to underestimate the true number of complaints because participants may be withdrawn (e.g., deaths, losses to follow-up, and refusals) before they ever complain of an adverse effect.
  • (16) Hysterography and hysteroscopy have been compared in the diagnosis of endouterine benign pathology, in a group of 50 patients, complaining meno-metrorrhagia, sterility, infertility or amenorrhea.
  • (17) A 55-year-old Japanese man was admitted to our hospital in January 1985 complaining of epigastralgia.
  • (18) Israel has complained in recent weeks of an increase in stone throwing and molotov cocktail attacks on West Bank roads and in areas adjoining mainly Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, where an elderly motorist died after crashing his car during an alleged stoning attack.
  • (19) The force said reports from its directorate of professional standards (DPS) were not routinely disclosed to complainants or outsiders.
  • (20) Although 41% of the participants complained of dry mouth, neither serious adverse effects nor evidence of medication abuse appeared.

Grumble


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To murmur or mutter with discontent; to make ill-natured complaints in a low voice and a surly manner.
  • (v. i.) To growl; to snarl in deep tones; as, a lion grumbling over his prey.
  • (v. i.) To rumble; to make a low, harsh, and heavy sound; to mutter; as, the distant thunder grumbles.
  • (v. t.) To express or utter with grumbling.
  • (n.) The noise of one that grumbles.
  • (n.) A grumbling, discontented disposition.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Should I man up, chuck out the Union flags and get back to grumbling about the Games?
  • (2) I have weekly massages to iron out all the bumps and grumbles in my legs.
  • (3) But the huge shortfalls, and the grumblings of African countries, are not going to matter as much in Washington as the fact that Obama can claim that he went face to face with China – and won.
  • (4) Although, among jobbing-actor roles in series such as Casualty, Lovejoy and Inspector Morse, he also appeared in the Dennis Potter drama Cream in My Coffee (1980), with Peggy Ashcroft; a TV version of Mr Jekyll and Hyde (1990) and Ending Up (1989), based on the Kingsley Amis novel about old buffers going grumbling to their doom.
  • (5) No: people want to see live animals!” The purists will grumble.
  • (6) The couple were not married, and there were grumblings that, with no official status as first lady, she should not be spending money on her five personal assistants and the running of an independent office in the Elysée.
  • (7) Stop grumbling about renewables and unlock the opportunities they offer.
  • (8) The companies would be in no position to grumble about unfair tactics since they are guilty of worse.
  • (9) West Ham's manager of three years, who steered the team to a 13th-place finish this season after flirting with relegation for long periods, held talks with the co-chairman David Sullivan on Tuesday amid grumbling supporters' discontent at the style of football the side have played.
  • (10) Shirburn grumbled, Ayer apologised, the tanks rolled on.
  • (11) "Diane sold her principles by sending her kids to private school and spending a lot of time on the box cosying up to Michael Portillo, making comments for the sake of projection on TV," one grumbled, anonymously, yesterday.
  • (12) Starting with the visit of Canadian rivals Toronto FC , who grumbled their way through last week’s home defeat by KC and whose mood won’t have been improved by a 3-0 thrashing in DC in midweek.
  • (13) "Bilge," he grumbled when another student wanted to know about his links with a lobbying firm that later worked for Colonel Gaddafi.
  • (14) They'd grumble, but that's business, as it happens every day.
  • (15) Since Peter Hall was allowed leaves of absence for other projects by sometimes grumbling chairmen ( as charted in his published Diaries ), there has been an emphasis on the job being full-time.
  • (16) There were authors grumbling about not going to the Oscars .
  • (17) Recent collaboration between traditionally fractious teaching unions to oppose cuts to the school rebuilding programme gained more traction than the usual grumbles about pay because it spoke to parents as well as professionals.
  • (18) He has grumbled a lot about obstruction by the civil service, but not actually done much about it.
  • (19) English friends had explained to me, not without pride, the importance of grumbling to the national character, but I still want to stress to every Londoner I meet that — take it from a visiting Los Angeleno — the tube exists, and that counts as no trifling achievement.
  • (20) Jeremy Hunt grumbled that because patients would not know their out-of-hours doctors, they would opt to go to A&E instead.