What's the difference between conniving and ruthless?

Conniving


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Connive

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Despite his advocacy on behalf of leftists and nationalists, there were those who believed he connived to ensure that the left faction did not get the upper hand in the PAP.
  • (2) Wealthy individuals and religious foundations in Saudi Arabia , Kuwait, Qatar and elsewhere in the Gulf have channelled millions of dollars to the anti-Assad opposition, though it is not clear with what degree of official connivance.
  • (3) So while the Turkish parliament congratulated itself on a long night’s defence of democracy, many wonder why its members connived in the decline of the rule of law.
  • (4) They should never have connived in the absurd policy of allowing housing benefit to soar to pay ever-higher rents for those on benefit or in low-paid jobs and simultaneously permitting council houses to be sold without their replacement.
  • (5) – with the connivance of the Sun, a headline on whose front page reading THE TRUTH is in any circumstances beyond satire.
  • (6) Her summary of the issues underscored several key points, among them the reality that the publishers were as conniving as Apple, but that they perceived Apple's market power too strong to challenge.
  • (7) According to Robert Gates, the former US defence secretary, Washington was so keen to oust the Afghan president that officials connived in delaying an Afghan presidential election in 2009 and then tried to manipulate the outcome in a "clumsy and failed putsch".
  • (8) On Monday the Russian foreign ministry denounced the lawlessness it said “now rules in eastern regions of Ukraine as a result of the actions of fighters of the so-called Right Sector, with the full connivance” of Ukraine’s new authorities.
  • (9) Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader whose trial for the Bosnian genocide began last month in The Hague, lived openly for years in Serbian army barracks with the connivance of sympathetic senior officers.
  • (10) It is a story of deceit that has left thousands of British refugees living in misery for the past 40 years, exiled from their island home by a conniving and unrepentant government."
  • (11) Horman had spotted US warships off the Chilean coast at Valparaiso shortly after the coup and had believed this showed signs of American connivance.
  • (12) This process of polarisation and mutual alienation culminated last Friday with Obama’s active connivance in the passing of a landmark UN security council resolution.
  • (13) A lot of people, including the opposition, have connived in giving this a humanitarian gloss.
  • (14) "The mafia that invests, that launders money, that therefore has the real power, is the mafia which has got rich for years from its connivance with the church," said Gratteri.
  • (15) A third actor, the one who plays the conniving lady's maid Sarah O'Brien, has now left the cast too.
  • (16) But abuse and criminal activity on this sort of scale cannot possibly happen without passive connivance from the very top.
  • (17) Meanwhile, in a (seemingly) parallel story, medieval dullard Alaïs must protect the (apparently) same ring from gnashing crusaders and conniving sister Oriane, who is also banging Alaïs's expressionless husband.
  • (18) Israel's new ruler refused to meet Arafat, whom he charged with duplicity and connivance in murder.
  • (19) The newspaper said it had found evidence of widespread theft of ivory “perpetuated by [Uganda Wildlife Authority] staff” who connive with wildlife traffickers.
  • (20) The Liberal Democrats have disowned their former icon, Sir Cyril Smith, amid evidence of appalling and repeated sexual abuse of children, as a new controversy raged over allegations that police, spies and politicians connived in an establishment cover-up of his activities.

Ruthless


Definition:

  • (a.) Having no ruth; cruel; pitiless.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) AB InBev has cut costs ruthlessly as it has bought up companies around the world, including Anheuser-Busch, the brewer of US beer Budweiser.
  • (2) As Greece pleads with its eurozone creditors for more time in meeting its fiscal adjustment targets, Dombrovskis is a fierce champion of surgical austerity applied quickly and ruthlessly.
  • (3) Rather than ruthlessly efficient, I have found them sweet and a bit hopeless."
  • (4) This thread ran through his later writings, which focused particularly on questions of the transformation of work and working time, envisaging the possibility that the productivity gains made possible by capitalism could be used to enhance individual and social life, rather than intensifying ruthless economic competition and social division.
  • (5) "Sometimes a handshake is just a handshake, but when the leader of the free world shakes the bloody hand of a ruthless dictator like Raúl Castro , it becomes a propaganda coup for the tyrant," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican Congress member in Florida, told the US secretary of state, John Kerry.
  • (6) But Hilton insists critics are wrong to see the group as ruthless youngsters who meet purely to further their own careers.
  • (7) This is how powerful a hold it has over them.” Mossino, who works with refugees and asylum seekers as well as victims of trafficking, says that in the past decade the trade in Nigerian women has become a hugely profitable and ruthless criminal industry, controlled largely by Nigerian gangs that took root in Italy in the 1980s.
  • (8) On 12 September 1980, the head of the military, Kenan Evren, sent tanks rolling through the streets of the Turkish capital and installed a ruthless military government.
  • (9) The "consultation" and "informed consent" the reports insist must take place before the project goes ahead are a sick joke in a region in which dissent is ruthlessly crushed and people are imprisoned and tortured simply for speaking their own language.
  • (10) She is also waiting to hear if she has won a second Olivier award, this time for her role as the ruthless Hollywood agent in The Little Dog Laughed, the play that transferred from Broadway to the West End last year.
  • (11) A boss on some astronomic pay packet may be held back by shame from paying his cleaners too little relative to that, but emotion will not get in the way of ruthlessness if the process all takes place behind the veil of some corporate contract.
  • (12) "What is clear is that they are as ruthless as any Islamist group or terrorists anywhere in the world," said Antony Goldman, a west Africa risk analyst at London-based PM Consulting.
  • (13) The often confusing circumstances that led to their courts martial and the ruthlessness of their punishments only fully came to light with the publication in 1989 of Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes's history Shot at Dawn .
  • (14) If there was reason to be worried following five successive defeats, their worst run of the century, they showed no sign of panic during a ruthless attacking performance which guarantees they will spend Christmas in the top six.
  • (15) She was ambitious, and Colonel Gaddafi has always promoted ruthless people.
  • (16) Every couple of years, evidence emerges to underline the unparalleled nature of the state onslaught and ruthless rule-breaking to overcome resistance in the mining communities, bought at a cost of £37bn in today's prices .
  • (17) The footage underscores the ruthlessness of fighting in Pakistan's border areas, where the army has also faced allegations of massacres.
  • (18) Philip French championed Boyle's career from the outset, describing his debut feature film, Shallow Grave , as "a good piece of storytelling... Hitchcock would have admired its ruthlessness and cruel humour."
  • (19) In the past decade, European migration was used as a sort of 21st-century incomes policy in Britain as employers ruthlessly exploited migrant labour to hold down wages – which have since been cut in real terms for four years in a row as a result of the crisis.
  • (20) But we can all probably do without Fifa's "fair play in marketing" lectures, which clothe commercial ruthlessness in the language of sporting decency, apparently oblivious to the impression given by wallpapering every stadium with signs that push BP or declare "We proudly accept only Visa".