What's the difference between curse and spell?

Curse


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To call upon divine or supernatural power to send injury upon; to imprecate evil upon; to execrate.
  • (v. t.) To bring great evil upon; to be the cause of serious harm or unhappiness to; to furnish with that which will be a cause of deep trouble; to afflict or injure grievously; to harass or torment.
  • (v. i.) To utter imprecations or curses; to affirm or deny with imprecations; to swear.
  • (v. t.) An invocation of, or prayer for, harm or injury; malediction.
  • (v. t.) Evil pronounced or invoked upon another, solemnly, or in passion; subjection to, or sentence of, divine condemnation.
  • (v. t.) The cause of great harm, evil, or misfortune; that which brings evil or severe affliction; torment.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But it was also a portrait of an England charged with secrets - and, as Michael Billington put it, the work of an accomplished playwright who understood the English curse of 'emotional evasion.'
  • (2) A new, terrible curse that comes on top of the bleaching, the battering, the poisoning and the pollution.
  • (3) She comes from the "cursed" political dynasty in Pakistan : her grandfather, the former president Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was executed in 1979, three years before Fatima was born; her father, the radical politician Murtaza Bhutto, was shot dead by police in 1996; and her aunt, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed in a bombing in 2007.
  • (4) It has somehow managed to escape the curse of Murdoch, who partly owns it.
  • (5) But it accused South Park of having mocked the prophet, and cited Islamic scholars who ruled that "whoever curses the messenger of Allah must be killed".
  • (6) Now they await the results of the American League Championship Series to see whether this year's World Series will be a rematch of 2004, when the Cardinals were swept by the curse-reversing Boston Red Sox, or 2006, when the Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers and became one of the worst teams to win the World Series in MLB history .
  • (7) Several survivors and family members of the victims who were flown to the US testified this week , and one cursed Bales for attacking villagers as some slept and others screamed for mercy.
  • (8) The bakers can freeze each layer as it goes on, tensely waiting by the ice box, cursing under their breath.
  • (9) Still alive, he was then surrounded by people who cursed and spat at him, kicked him in the head and tried to hit him with a chair.
  • (10) How they got here You'll be forgiven if you thought they were still cursed, if you had been following recent baseball history.
  • (11) Not a Lynyrd Skynyrd "doom will plague you at every turn" sort of curse, it must be said; more a sequence of mildly irritating events.
  • (12) In 1 infant diagnosed with Ondine's curse, examination showed diffuse neuronal loss and gliosis in the medullary tegmentum.
  • (13) Since then, the cursing and sobbing have been plentiful.
  • (14) Maguwu said: "To me it's very clear the diamonds have been a curse to this country.
  • (15) As Taylor cursed, McClaren embarked on a tactical rejig.
  • (16) The curse of playing Ari Gold is that Jeremy Piven may have to spend the rest of his life trying to convince the world he is not a rage-fuelled blustering asshole.
  • (17) They managed to catch two people, aged no more than 30, and were beating them up badly, swearing at them all the time and cursing the Shia clerics, saying: "Where is al-Khomeini now?
  • (18) It would swirl around that child's head in the manner of a bad fairy from a storybook bringing along a cursed gift to a christening.
  • (19) Infantile delivery also frequently serves to take the curse off self-publicity; sleight of hand for those who find "my programme is on BBC2 tonight" too presumptuous and exposing, and prefer to cower behind the low-status imbecility of "I done rote a fingy for da tellybox!"
  • (20) This discovered gothic quality within everyday life found one of its finest expressions in the American work of French-born director Jacques Tourneur , especially the brilliant Cat People (1943), Curse of the Cat People (1944) and Night of the Demon (1957).

Spell


Definition:

  • (n.) A spelk, or splinter.
  • (v. t.) To supply the place of for a time; to take the turn of, at work; to relieve; as, to spell the helmsman.
  • (n.) The relief of one person by another in any piece of work or watching; also, a turn at work which is carried on by one person or gang relieving another; as, a spell at the pumps; a spell at the masthead.
  • (n.) The time during which one person or gang works until relieved; hence, any relatively short period of time, whether a few hours, days, or weeks.
  • (n.) One of two or more persons or gangs who work by spells.
  • (n.) A gratuitous helping forward of another's work; as, a logging spell.
  • (n.) A story; a tale.
  • (n.) A stanza, verse, or phrase supposed to be endowed with magical power; an incantation; hence, any charm.
  • (v. t.) To tell; to relate; to teach.
  • (v. t.) To put under the influence of a spell; to affect by a spell; to bewitch; to fascinate; to charm.
  • (v. t.) To constitute; to measure.
  • (v. t.) To tell or name in their proper order letters of, as a word; to write or print in order the letters of, esp. the proper letters; to form, as words, by correct orthography.
  • (v. t.) To discover by characters or marks; to read with difficulty; -- usually with out; as, to spell out the sense of an author; to spell out a verse in the Bible.
  • (v. i.) To form words with letters, esp. with the proper letters, either orally or in writing.
  • (v. i.) To study by noting characters; to gain knowledge or learn the meaning of anything, by study.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We outline a protocol for presenting the diagnosis of pseudoseizure with the goal of conveying to the patient the importance of knowing the nonepileptic nature of the spells and the need for psychiatric follow-up.
  • (2) The government did not spell out the need for private holders of bank debt to take any losses – known as haircuts – under its plans but many analysts believe that this position is untenable.
  • (3) The tasks which appeared to present the most difficulties for the patients were written spelling, pragmatic processing tasks like sentence disambiguation and proverb interpretation.
  • (4) John Carver witnessed signs of much-needed improvement from the visitors in a purposeful spell either side of the interval but it was not enough to prevent a fifth successive Premier League defeat.
  • (5) The lesson, spelled out by Oak Creek's mayor, Steve Saffidi, was that it shouldn't have taken a tragedy for Sikhs, or anyone else, to find acceptance.
  • (6) Likud warned: “Peres will divide Jerusalem.” Arab states feared that his dream of a borderless Middle East spelled Israeli economic colonialism by stealth.
  • (7) This could spell disaster for small farmers, says Million Belay, co-ordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.
  • (8) In addition to expected differences in spelling and reading, probands obtained significantly (P less than or equal to .01) lower scores than controls on tests of other cognitive abilities.
  • (9) Despite fulfilling a boyhood wish to play for Milan when he returned to Italy, the striker admitted he erred in taking his career back to Serie A, having had a controversial spell at Internazionale before City recruited him for £17.5m in August 2010.
  • (10) Yesterday, John McDonnell spelled out the new Labour leadership’s public investment-driven economic alternative to austerity.
  • (11) Recognition memory was assessed by asking subjects to indicate which words from a longer list were presented during the spelling test.
  • (12) It was a spell in which the Dutch were in the ascendancy.
  • (13) When I wrote this week's public manager column pointing out that there are still too few women in senior public sector leadership roles, it didn't occur to me that I would have to spell out the reasons why it might be a good idea to have a few more women in top positions.
  • (14) Sigurdsson joined Reading as a youngster in 2005, and had loan spells at Crewe and Shrewsbury before breaking into the first team.
  • (15) Slow speech development occurred frequently in developmental and acquired spelling dysgraphic children.
  • (16) True, that comment was made early in Guardiola’s spell as Bayern manager and perhaps it was just a way of endearing himself to his new captain, but there is no doubt the former Barcelona manager adores Lahm.
  • (17) Since ALS occurs mostly in older age groups, this brings up the possibility that aging changes in the brain could play a causative role in the origin of such spells.
  • (18) A long spell of ultra-low interest rates has not driven a rise in inequality in the UK, the deputy governor of the Bank of England has said, rebuffing criticism that central bank policy had hurt some households.
  • (19) 3.05pm BST The Russian foreign ministry has again spelled out Sergei Lavrov's objections to threatening Syria with force if it doesn't comply with the chemical weapons agreement.
  • (20) However, when spelling ability was investigated, a heritability of 0.53 was obtained, increasing to 0.75 when intelligence was controlled.