(n.) One of a sect or school of philosophers founded by Antisthenes, and of whom Diogenes was a disciple. The first Cynics were noted for austere lives and their scorn for social customs and current philosophical opinions. Hence the term Cynic symbolized, in the popular judgment, moroseness, and contempt for the views of others.
(n.) One who holds views resembling those of the Cynics; a snarler; a misanthrope; particularly, a person who believes that human conduct is directed, either consciously or unconsciously, wholly by self-interest or self-indulgence, and that appearances to the contrary are superficial and untrustworthy.
Example Sentences:
(1) Still, cynics might say they can identify at least one reason it all might fail: namely form.
(2) But he won’t call.” Allardyce is also cynical about an offer from Swansea to compensate around 300 Sunderland fans who had booked trips to Wales before the date change.
(3) And it was here, several years later, that I came looking for an answer to a question which has baffled many cynical film critics: how did a low-key prison drama, which was considered a box-office flop on its initial release, become one of the most popular movies of all time?
(4) I have not met someone as cynical as Museveni,” Besigye told a rally in eastern Uganda in January.
(5) The aim of this study was to determine how individual differences in cynical hostility and defensiveness interacted with situational demands to affect cardiovascular responses in a natural setting.
(6) It goes on: "In a reality of ongoing occupation, of solid cynicism and meanness, each and every one of us bears the moral obligation to try to relieve the suffering, do something to bend back the occupation's giant, cruel hand."
(7) The present study extended this previous research by evaluating urinary cortisol excretion during routine daily activities in a sample of high and low cynically hostile young men.
(8) If Deng is a 21st-century Becky Sharp, we should recall that for all her cynicism, Thackeray's heroine also possessed an indomitable spirit.
(9) Oil companies are sponsoring the arts around the world on an “epidemic” scale as a cynical PR strategy to improve their reputation, a new book argues.
(10) The British ambassador to Ukraine , Simon Smith, called Yanukovych's decision "an egregious piece of cynicism".
(11) Cynics will tell you Camra’s membership know all about identity crises – once the rebels of the 1970s, they’re now mostly older dads and grandads – purists upholding Camra’s “cask only” creed as sacred.
(12) The swift action of the US in withdrawing funding is likely to increase cynicism among Palestinians about the credibility of the US as a mediator between them and the Israelis.
(13) Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat campaign manager, accused Cameron of using the Greens to duck TV debates, adding: “Not since the photos of Cameron driving huskies have green issues been so cynically harnessed to Tory interest.” The broadcasters have proposed three one-hour TV debates, the first involving the Ukip, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative leaders, the second Lib Dem, Labour and Tory.
(14) Police officers resigned and politicians were embarrassed as the scandal erupted, but Scotland Yard – with dazzling cynicism – has reacted by trying to silence the kind of police whistleblowers who helped to expose the failures of their leaders; and ambitious politicians continue to dine with Rupert Murdoch.
(15) I'm always initially very cynical: who are these people, they look ridiculous.'
(16) To somehow use the upcoming 2012 Olympics as a reason to do this is, in my opinion, unforgivably cynical.
(17) Serving on the government's Renewables Advisory Board from 2003 to 2006, I witnessed what cynics could easily have mistaken for a deliberate campaign of delay, obfuscation, and the parking, if not torpedoing, of good ideas coming from industry members of the board."
(18) Swansea, for whom Jefferson Montero was outstanding, levelled when Gylfi Sigurdsson curled a sublime 25-yard free-kick into the top corner, after Kieran Gibbs had cynically brought down Modou Barrow, the Swansea substitute.
(19) Cynics would say it has taken the scientific community a long time to achieve very little progress in our understanding of HIV-mediated CNS damage.
(20) The aid cynics attacking the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on development assistance should take note.
Stoic
Definition:
(n.) A disciple of the philosopher Zeno; one of a Greek sect which held that men should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and should submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity, by which all things are governed.
(n.) Hence, a person not easily excited; an apathetic person; one who is apparently or professedly indifferent to pleasure or pain.
(n.) Alt. of Stoical
Example Sentences:
(1) His mother, devoted and stoic, read aloud the sad, true stories of cruelty and passion between the wars contained in his father's briefs for the divorce court.
(2) My dear stoic father, honest as the days are long, was looking, for once in his life, thoroughly jangled, and I kept wanting to impart upon him mentally the wise words of Grandpa Abe Simpson : "They say the greatest tragedy is when a father outlives his son.
(3) I don’t know if it has to do with his stoic demeanor as he sat behind President Obama during a State of the Union, or those baby-blue eyes all over the news on Tuesday, as he announced that he wasn’t running for president this year, citing his faith in the political process ( swoon ).
(4) There's Diane, the co-founding partner at Alicia's law firm, who is neither bitch nor secretly unfulfilled nor shrew; Alicia herself, an almost uniquely stoic female character; Kalinda, who – well, she just kicks ass in every way, don't get me started; Peter's mother, who sits like a sweetly smiling spider in the middle of the domestic web; and even the Florricks' 14-year-old daughter is not a screaming teenage cipher but a thoughtful and considered player in this increasingly brilliant ensemble piece.
(5) A paranoid strain is manifest in Stoic utterances generally, especially in the Stoic conception of autarky, where the Sage regards himself as distinctly "other" in the midst of society, and indifferent to its values, except as he dissembles his indifference.
(6) Rahat, then 23, was expected to quietly carry on the family tradition: a stoic commitment to devotional music.
(7) Scattered throughout are cutaways of undulating hills and stoic ruminants filming exterior shots of sheep against a backdrop of yawning bees.
(8) I looked over toward the stoic portrait of Alfred Wegener for a bit of strength.
(9) I expected sadness but there was mainly stoic pride.
(10) "That tribalist attitude, that stoic adherence to past genres – especially coming from Manchester – it's really weird, because no person of my generation consumes any media in a linear format.
(11) A stoic silence, sustained by an artificial pretence that Mr Brown has his party's convinced backing, may be thought the best strategy now – even if voters will see through it.
(12) This myth is embodied by a stoic and conflictive figure, product of an ethnic mixture, but more essentially of transculturation.
(13) The British themselves are pretty stoic, there is a long tradition of watching sport in rain macs or listening to Cliff Richard or whatever.
(14) Beginning with a very different attitude of the antiquity taken up to suicide, which was normally not regarded as a self-murdering but as a voluntary departing this life and as such as a philosophically based act of liberty especially by members of the stoic system who not seldom commited suicide themselves, another estimation is discussed which was exercised by the Pythagoreans and the members of the Aristotele's doctrine.
(15) DM: Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is playing the stoic holding role, refusing to budge and occasionally gesticulating wildly at the referee, although never actually getting into the danger zone at the forefront of the action.
(16) He paid as much attention to the floorboards or the tangle of buddleia in the yard below as he would to a woman's belly, Leigh Bowery's feminine bulk, Bruce Bernard's stoic drunkard's poise, Lord Goodman's vanity, Sue the Benefits Supervisor's affected boredom.
(17) Hunt, described on Monday by Sukey Cameron, representative of the Falkland Islands in London, as "stoic", deployed the local defence force of about 60 men (of which he was commander-in-chief) and a contingent of about 80 Royal Marines.
(18) What is more, Smith was scrupulous in ensuring that at no point had his philosophy been built on Christian or even, as some have claimed, Stoic, assumptions.
(19) In his memoirs, he seems stoic rather than bitter about his fall from grace: “In the eyes of the Parisians, who like routine in things but are changeable when it comes to people, I committed two great wrongs.
(20) In fact, by now, I have reached the conclusion that a person may make a decision to die because the balance of their mind is level, realistic, pragmatic, stoic and sharp.