What's the difference between curt and retort?

Curt


Definition:

  • (a.) Characterized by excessive brevity; short; rudely concise; as, curt limits; a curt answer.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Stout – even the name is robust: broad-mouthed and curtly clipped at the end.
  • (2) Immediately after the budget, he vented his fury by destroying the group’s online presence, removing all its content and replacing the home page with a curt note stating: “This website is temporarily closed owing to disability cuts ... Graeme Ellis has resigned and will no longer develop or host this site.” His protest had an unexpectedly powerful impact, attracting headlines, and crystallising the sense that this was a cut too far, even for Conservative activists.
  • (3) ", to which the prime minister replied somewhat curtly: "Yes, we were neighbours."
  • (4) The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council issued curt but not hostile statements that publicly expressed their desire to meet him.
  • (5) "We will obviously fight it because it is not justified and there is no way she's going back over there," Curt Knox said.
  • (6) At one point Bannon attempted to put his left hand on Priebus’s knee, only for Priebus to curtly brush him off.
  • (7) I was surprised by the soundman's impatient intrusiveness and yet more surprised as I stood just off set, beside the faux-newsroom near the pseudo-researchers who appear on camera as pulsating set dressing, when the soundman yapped me to heel with the curt entitlement of Idi Amin's PA.
  • (8) The unknowability of the Holocaust was famously, if inadvertently, expressed by the guard at Auschwitz who curtly told Primo Levi: “There is no why here.” We cannot in the end explain the Holocaust: it is beyond explanation.
  • (9) The Red Sox battled their way back from the edge of playoff elimination via back-to-back blown saves off of Mariano Rivera , two walk-off hits from David Ortiz and a game six pitching performance by a hobbled Curt Schilling.
  • (10) The history of asepsis is closely connected with the name of Curt Schimmelbusch.
  • (11) Oakland pitching coach Curt Young has a brief conference to see if they should put Miguel Cabrera on intentionally with first base open.
  • (12) After all, they had a stating pitcher rotation that featured Pedro Martinez, only a few years removed from the most dominant stretches any starting pitcher has had in baseball history, and a newly signed Curt Schilling, who was second only to an unworldly Johann Santana in that year's Cy Young voting.
  • (13) Edmund finishes his rutting (that's rutting ) with a curt "yes", a scene made worse only by the speed with which Julia Davis 's Dorothy enters the room, offering "bubbly milk".
  • (14) In the last few days Boyle has given more than 60 interviews, but seems to be still free of media savvy and professional coaching; her short and curt answers a mark of her no-nonsense approach to life.
  • (15) Yet his manner and tone suggested the opposite, along with the curtness of the response.
  • (16) Former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has found a new appreciation for his very “beautiful” son and sees no problem marveling at the attractiveness of underage girls.
  • (17) Updated at 4.27am BST 3.27am BST Asked what he would do as president, Mitt Romney starts to list his achievements as governor of Massachusetts, until Lehrer cuts his off with a curt "But what would you do as president?"
  • (18) He illustrates his point, showing how to sip and then curtly nod.
  • (19) With the curt, and blistering, announcement of his decision to file for divorce from Wendi Murdoch, the young woman he met when she was 28 and working for Star TV, his company in Hong Kong, another upheaval begins.
  • (20) No one actually mentioned the word divorce so early in the piece but when you’ve got one sailing boat, five days of unseasonably appalling conditions and two captains overinflating their sailing experience and underreporting their bossiness, that’s the threat lurking behind every curt instruction.

Retort


Definition:

  • (n.) To bend or curve back; as, a retorted line.
  • (n.) To throw back; to reverberate; to reflect.
  • (n.) To return, as an argument, accusation, censure, or incivility; as, to retort the charge of vanity.
  • (v. i.) To return an argument or a charge; to make a severe reply.
  • (v. t.) The return of, or reply to, an argument, charge, censure, incivility, taunt, or witticism; a quick and witty or severe response.
  • (v. t.) A vessel in which substances are subjected to distillation or decomposition by heat. It is made of different forms and materials for different uses, as a bulb of glass with a curved beak to enter a receiver for general chemical operations, or a cylinder or semicylinder of cast iron for the manufacture of gas in gas works.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) After I pointed this out, even with all the racist retorts he could muster, being told “he’s got you there mate” by his friends was the knockout that saved the night.
  • (2) I found their remarks a little ripe, if mostly well argued, although Nicholson's characterisation of the characters' default mindset as "Brown people bad, American people good" rather misses the obvious retort: "They wanna kill me, I wanna live."
  • (3) By measuring the solubility of Ni5As2 particles in a variety of aqueous solutions, we have determined that particulate Ni5As2 that might be produced during oil-shale retorting could be mobilized to the environment and made available to the cells of living organisms, including humans.
  • (4) Thus, it is possible that Ni5As2 could be solubilized and mobilized to the environment by the flooding of abandoned in situ retorts with ground water or by the disposal of oil-shale product water by spraying it on spent shale beds.
  • (5) The score should have been tied at 2-2 and the natural German retort that one of Geoff Hurst's goals in the 1966 World Cup was imaginary hardly makes the blunder of officials more palatable in Bloemfontein.
  • (6) In reply, Cameron retorts that the changes are infused with the moral purpose of bringing "new hope and responsibility" to benefits claimants.
  • (7) However, this evidence may have appeared stronger to the City of London police, HMRC and the Crown Prosecution Service when they first brought the charges than it did during the case, coming after revelations of phone-hacking and News Corporation's closure of the News of the World, which allowed Redknapp to continually express scorn and retort that he "did not have to tell the truth" to "that newspaper".
  • (8) "Would all these girls," he asks, with a sorrow that defies any glib, one-should-be-so-lucky retort, "be fucking me if they weren't getting paid?"
  • (9) Clinton shows strength over Trump in one of history's most significant debates Read more “It’s all words, it’s all soundbites,” he retorted after a particularly one-sided exchange, adding that Clinton was a “typical politician: all talk, no action”.
  • (10) The education secretary appeared to suggest that Graham was effectively helping opponents of the taxpayer-funded schools, which are independent of local authorities, to intimidate applicants – prompting Graham to retort that the arguments of Gove's department in resisting public disclosure "clearly failed to convince".
  • (11) Written and directed by Gillian Robespierre , Obvious Child tells the story of Donna, a standup comedian in Brooklyn whose chaotic life is a source of bemusement to her parents, who are unable to believe that their twentysomething daughter doesn’t even know how to do her taxes (“Nobody knows how to do their taxes!” Donna retorts, not wholly incorrectly.)
  • (12) The infant formulas were sterilized either by ultra-high temperature (UHT) treatment or by a conventional retort process to give products with low and high levels of MRPs and LAL, respectively.
  • (13) Similarly, Laura Bates's recent article on victim blaming should act as sufficient retort to anyone who thinks police chief KP Raghuvanshi's advice that women should carry chilli powder to prevent rape is symptomatic of a specifically Indian brand of misogyny.
  • (14) Obama, seemingly frustrated with Romney's elusiveness, retorted that it had been his opponent's strategy for 18 months.
  • (15) "That's an insult, Mr Black, that's an insult," Redknapp retorted.
  • (16) The bride retorts: “I’m the one who paid the quoted price.
  • (17) Carly Fiorina expertly defuses Trump on 'beautiful face' retort and foreign policy Read more The New York real estate mogul went out off his way to bash Carly Fiorina , the former Hewlett Packard CEO and GOP presidential rival with whom he sparred in Wednesday’s debate.
  • (18) Mailer punched Vidal at a party, prompting Vidal to retort: "Words fail Norman again."
  • (19) "Because the lawyer said it's legal," Bush retorted.
  • (20) The testicles were retorted at various intervals up to 24 hours.