What's the difference between conspire and contrive?

Conspire


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To make an agreement, esp. a secret agreement, to do some act, as to commit treason or a crime, or to do some unlawful deed; to plot together.
  • (v. i.) To concur to one end; to agree.
  • (v. t.) To plot; to plan; to combine for.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Paul Vickers, the legal director of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror, said the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) – announced on Monday – was being fast-tracked in an attempt to kill off accusations that big newspaper groups are conspiring to delay the introduction of a new regulator backed by royal charter.
  • (2) According to Kadyrov’s multiple outlandish, sometimes confused, statements the enemies aren’t just at the gates, but have entered the castle and are conspiring to take the country down.
  • (3) Following an eight-month trial, Brooks was in June cleared at the Old Bailey of conspiring to hack phones, illegal payments to a public official and perverting the course of justice.
  • (4) A confluence of my residual neurosis, the patient's neurosis, her transference state, her other characteristics (that she was female, for example), plus the fact that she was the last patient contacted, all conspired with the regression from the trauma of being hospitalized to produce the countertransference reaction.
  • (5) According to the US indictment, Ghinkul (and his co-conspirators, who remain un-named) tried to steal almost $1m from a school district in Pennsylvania, and successfully transferred over $3.5m from Penneco Oil in over the course of three separate attacks.
  • (6) They also accessed billing data for the conspirators and alleged conspirators’ phones, showing the date and time of incoming and outgoing calls, as well as geographical data about where the calls were made.
  • (7) But - as at Barclays and UBS - it's clear that some traders conspired to fix the rate by changing the rate that they submitted to the Libor panel.
  • (8) Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain were found guilty of conspiring to murder crew and passengers on transatlantic flights.
  • (9) Built in the 1570s and known as a 'miniature Hampton Court', it was once owned by one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators.
  • (10) Maybe we have conspired against ourselves at times, but it just didn't go for us."
  • (11) But now people are thinking about the public school elites, aristocracy, City of London investment bankers, corporate lobbyists, and the imperialist warmongers, apologists and conspirators in the media, not as instruments of good government and a healthy democracy, but as dangerous impediments to it.
  • (12) A brief court appearance was made in Sydney’s central local court on Thursday by Omarjan Azari, who has been charged with conspiring to commit an act of terrorism.
  • (13) Affairs were had and buildings were blown up; Olivia Pope drugged, kidnapped and changed the identity of one of her employees; the president’s chief of staff spent his time orchestrating murders, rigging elections and conspiring with hit men; the president got shot in the head, and still found time to murder a supreme court justice.
  • (14) Marcinkova and Kellen were among four named Epstein associates identified by US government prosecutors as “potential co-conspirators” who would avoid charges under the controversial plea deal Epstein struck in 2007, which saw him serve just over year in jail for his offences.
  • (15) Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev have been charged with conspiring to obstruct justice.
  • (16) "If the property market and the stock market conspired against it then the UK could possibly see the same thing happen."
  • (17) He responds: "Look, find weaknesses in me, criticise me for my weaknesses - I'm not as great a presenter of information or communicator as I would like to be - but the one thing people should not say is that I'm surrounded by some group of conspirators."
  • (18) It could have been his team celebrating a Double had they won at Villa Park and avoided defeat in their penultimate league game of the season to Leeds United, a match in which events seemed to conspire against them as dramatically as they went in favour of Ferguson’s side.
  • (19) Rajaratnam, a 52-year-old financier ranked by Forbes as the 559th richest man in the world, was arrested alongside five alleged conspirators in a dramatic series of raids by the US department of justice, based on evidence compiled from phone calls intercepted by wire taps.
  • (20) In the trial, Coulson was convicted of conspiring to hack phones while he was editor of the News of the World.

Contrive


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To form by an exercise of ingenuity; to devise; to invent; to design; to plan.
  • (v. i.) To make devices; to form designs; to plan; to scheme; to plot.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "If there is some kind of contrived scheme or vehicle, ie it's obvious that the purpose of the scheme is to avoid paying VAT and it's taking advantage of a loophole and we consider that tax is actually owed on the scheme, rather than just being a case of sensible tax planning … we can make the judgment that this is not legitimate tax planning.
  • (2) Here they led within 90 seconds against a team whose fragility has been all too clear this term, and still contrived to wilt almost apologetically.
  • (3) And I'll be catching several buzzy acts who I contrived to miss last year – Ivo Graham, Ursula Burns, Trygve (Squidboy) Wakenshaw, Phil Wang, Paul Currie.
  • (4) Rafael Benítez must contrive a way of picking this team up, as well as a starting lineup who are relatively fresh for Elland Road and a cup tie that once would have stirred the senses.
  • (5) When Grayson remarks to the men he meets that his transvestism allows him enough distance from maleness to view it as an observer, rather than bristle they nod, quietly ponder for a moment and then step back themselves, apparently accepting that maleness is such a weird contrivance that to look at it with critical eyes is Not Even A Thing.
  • (6) Capello's men have contrived to fail more severely than the line‑up beaten 4-2 by Uruguay in 1954.
  • (7) Support is provided by intercostal angiography, and by observations upon normal anatomy, the pathological anatomy of mature scoliotic spines and the anatomy of contrived scoliosis in normal spines.
  • (8) The natural and the contrived social experiments are reviewed as well as the issue of needed research on the effects of regulation on science and on the protection of privacy.
  • (9) Even after the Daily Mail's Jack Tinker (obituary, October 29 1996) contrived for Shulman's career as a theatre critic to be brought to an end in 1991, he continued to write a column for the Evening Standard on art affairs - until he was 83.
  • (10) Some patients find that the risk of a spontaneous attack is lessened following a self-induced seizure and can therefore contrive their fits to occur only in situations which are safe and convenient.
  • (11) Some contrivances in anastomosing a conduit were also proposed to achieve an excellent result.
  • (12) "It's more contrived in terms of 'good girl gone bad' or 'I'm so edgy – I'm twerking in this context.'
  • (13) Always a contrived fiction, this sequence juxtaposes a poignant fantasy of a fully fit presenter with the merciless world of hard news.
  • (14) A coded panel of 100 contrived dried blood spots prepared form well characterised anti-HIV-1 and anti-HIV-2 positive sera and an anti-HIV negative serum was distributed to eight testing centres.
  • (15) Despite papal fiction being such a crowded church, Harris, in Conclave , contrives a twist involving the number of cardinal-electors that seems to me completely new, showing that the genre still has possibilities.
  • (16) Although oral administration volume is limited in small animal model, enhancing its antitumor effect may be possible in clinical application by contriving the method of administration.
  • (17) Events went from bad to ridiculous for the Redbirds in the second inning, when Stephen Drew popped the ball up into the infield and catcher Yadier Molina and pitcher Adam Wainwright both moved towards the ball and then contrived to call each other off and watched the ball drop harmlessly between them.
  • (18) "We will dedicate our seventh goal to our wives, and the eighth to our dogs," quipped one player, while the manager, Jupp Derwall, promised that if his team contrived to lose he would "jump on the first train back to Munich".
  • (19) The tasks were presented in various ways: by means of a table-top simulation on which traffic scenarios had been contrived; by means of photographs of road situations; and by taking the children to real-world sites in the streets near their schools.
  • (20) The amendment left the government facing the prospect of scuttling its own legislation to give the tax office greater powers to stop global companies using “artificial or contrived arrangements” to avoid tax obligations.