What's the difference between contrivance and gimmick?

Contrivance


Definition:

  • (n.) The act or faculty of contriving, inventing, devising, or planning.
  • (n.) The thing contrived, invented, or planned; disposition of parts or causes by design; a scheme; plan; atrifice; arrangement.

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.

Gimmick


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But Clarke said he would not be diverted by “kneejerk short-term decisions” and “gimmicks”.
  • (2) "The leader in developing this technology was Toshiba but it has recently given up developing the technology after failing to get it to work to a level that was considered acceptable … Amazon is right to differentiate its device, but it needs to do so in its [app] ecosystem not in hardware gimmicks."
  • (3) Like his wind turbine though, discreetly taken down some months later, many people are now concluding that Cameron's promise to lead the " greenest government ever " was little more than a fraudulent gimmick, a PR stunt from a man schooled in the PR industry.
  • (4) Do they attack him – as the retiring veteran Queensland National party senator Ron Boswell urges – call him out as a cult of personality fuelled by gimmicks to try to stop him extending his influence.
  • (5) They cut taxes on corporate Britain while indulging in entirely destructive gimmicks such as scrapping the 10p tax rate.
  • (6) At the risk of of sounding like, well, a girl, I have to say I found it a bit blokely with far too many gimmicks (Lawro's hair?
  • (7) Aberdare has a covered market near the station, where fruit and vegetables and meat and fish are for sale, alongside knitting wool and clothes and gimmicks and gadgets.
  • (8) Compared with emissions source control, reducing emissions once diluted in the atmosphere is challenging.” Alan Andrews, a lawyer at ClientEarth, which won the supreme court case and is taking the government to court again , said: “Research should be focused on cutting air pollution at source, not on gimmicks which seek to treat the symptoms but not the causes of Britain’s air pollution crisis.
  • (9) Please, get rid of the gimmicks – the faux-concerned and impersonal feedback loop and the specious “choice” paradigm designed to soften us up for privatisation – and listen to your frontline staff.
  • (10) Seen once, it is a cool effect; twice through 10 times, a self-conscious gimmick; 65 times, something approaching a guiding ethic.
  • (11) Review: Amazon’s Fire Phone offers new gimmicks, old platform growing pains - Ars Technica Past tablet success isn't enough to guarantee a win for Amazon in the high-end smartphone game for Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica: The problem is that even if all of your media lives in Amazon's cloud, phones running iOS or Google-approved Android can access all of it without the third-party app gap or FireOS' idiosyncrasies (the exception is Instant Video on Android, though rumour has it that Amazon will be releasing that app soon).
  • (12) Germany has told its second largest bank, Commerzbank, to rescue itself with a whole series of assets sales and creative accounting gimmicks that will, among other things, mean it is likely to cut lending again.
  • (13) Camera: Great for stills, but ultra HD is a gimmick The Note 3 packs the same camera as the Samsung Galaxy S4, which at 13-megapixels produces clean, colourful and sharp images in decent lighting.
  • (14) To sceptics, he was an opportunist prone to gimmicks – such as the attractive policewomen who paraded around Dalian on horseback when he ran the city.
  • (15) Cooper insisted that Labour's plans on immigration, which include trebling the maximum fine for employing illegal workers to �£30,000, were a contrast to the government's "gimmicks" such as text messages and "offensive" advertising vans.
  • (16) If Sony treats it like a gimmick, people will get tired of it as fast as they did with the 3D TV.” At the Morpheus event, Marks was very keen to stress that Sony understands the wider implications of VR.
  • (17) Cowell warns against gimmicks on this front: he didn’t like Channel 4’s The Singer Takes It All, for example, with its contestants moving forwards and backwards on conveyor belts as they sang, in response to live voting.
  • (18) It's a neat gimmick, but it won't get you very far.
  • (19) Although her first use of the new device resulted in protests from a van driver, she claims reactions from drivers have been positive since and rejects suggestions that the device may be seen as a gimmick or unnecessary.
  • (20) Young’s appointment was attacked by the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, as a PR gimmick.