What's the difference between decency and decorum?

Decency


Definition:

  • (n.) The quality or state of being decent, suitable, or becoming, in words or behavior; propriety of form in social intercourse, in actions, or in discourse; proper formality; becoming ceremony; seemliness; hence, freedom from obscenity or indecorum; modesty.
  • (n.) That which is proper or becoming.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This is not some sophisticated, Westminstery battle, but a life-and-death, misery-or-decency choice about the very basics of life for hundreds of thousands of older British people.
  • (2) "Throughout America, the Queen stands for decency and civility."
  • (3) Yes, Goldsmith is to be held in contempt: a man of decency would have rejected this gutter strategy.
  • (4) "Sir Alex Ferguson had the decency to phone me to let me know that he was going in another direction after I applied for the reserve team post at Manchester United in 2003.
  • (5) As Obama put it in her speech today, this isn’t about politics, “it’s about basic human decency”.
  • (6) Having been born in Belgium he didn't start from a belief in the inferiority of other countries, but he loved Britain for the security it offered his family and the gentle decency of our nation."
  • (7) She is talking to Dizzee Rascal, who at least has the decency to goon around for the camera.
  • (8) If Whittingdale had any honour, any mercy, and any basic human decency, he would murder David Attenborough himself today, in his bed, to spare him any further suffering.
  • (9) But we can all probably do without Fifa's "fair play in marketing" lectures, which clothe commercial ruthlessness in the language of sporting decency, apparently oblivious to the impression given by wallpapering every stadium with signs that push BP or declare "We proudly accept only Visa".
  • (10) Neither the Congress nor evaluators have clear concepts of what constitutes a life of decency and dignity for the chronically dependent.
  • (11) At 6ft 3in tall, the lanky Peck was a pillar of moral rectitude standing up for decency and tolerance.
  • (12) Austerity as we know it – where basic human decency is sacrificed to solutions that purport to be cheaper but turn out not to be – actually started before the austerity narrative.
  • (13) Decency is one of those lines.” Erickson also told reporters: “I don’t want to put words in [Trump’s] mouth and I hate using the label misogynist because I think its used too much but he’s suggesting a woman as a lady asked him a question and did so because it was her time of the month.
  • (14) I hope David Cameron has the decency to invite you around for coffee or lunch as Tony Blair and David Blunkett did once I was out.
  • (15) A former director general of the prison service, Martin Narey, who now has a contract with the firm as a consultant on decency in G4S prisons, says he was once vehemently opposed to private-sector involvement in the prison service before he was appointed in 1998.
  • (16) Few would challenge the Camerons' fundamental decency.
  • (17) Looking first at the smaller politics, the attack by Fallon on Miliband’s decency and fitness for No 10 was a risky play by the Tories.
  • (18) In Uncommon Danger, the representatives of communism and what Zaleshoff calls "moderate radicalism" but Kenton himself would probably think of as basic human decency are pitted against the agents of capital and fascism: Balterghen, Saridza and their many cronies.
  • (19) But the depth of this tragedy also drew out the decency and determination of our nation.
  • (20) Fry wrote: "I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathsome and inhumane.

Decorum


Definition:

  • (n.) Propriety of manner or conduct; grace arising from suitableness of speech and behavior to one's own character, or to the place and occasion; decency of conduct; seemliness; that which is seemly or suitable.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "I know all the famous stories regarding this novel's battles against censorship, and certainly there are later chapters of the book that intentionally push the boundaries of social decorum, but nothing like that was in my first chapter of the adaptation" – as far as they have currently got with their ongoing project.
  • (2) He won’t look at you when you pull up beside him, honking about decorum and proper manners.
  • (3) It was through these now-remote valleys that ideas of art, decorum, dress, religion and court culture passed backwards and forwards, east to west and back again, mixing and melding to create the most unexpected conjuctions.
  • (4) It’s also good decorum to cover your parts with both hands on entering and leaving the water (note bottoms are generally considered less offensive) and not to saunter around once on land.
  • (5) Why is she wearing that crap?” asked one, revealing the level of abuse targeted at Watson for any hint of self-possession or decorum.
  • (6) If the argument is that because she is an internationally renowned star, and, therefore, Madonna believes she deserved to be treated differently from other visiting foreigners, it is worth making her aware that Malawi has hosted many international stars, including Chuck Norris, Bono, David James, Rio Ferdinand and Gary Neville who have never demanded state attention or decorum despite their equally dazzling stature.
  • (7) Nonetheless, even though most of the pleasures in life were beyond their reach, these New England women took great pride in what little they had and put great stock in a particular dress, bonnet, or tea service that enabled them to maintain a sense of dignity and decorum in the face of great adversity.
  • (8) Facebook Twitter Pinterest In short Kenneth MacMillan was a working-class boy who went to the top of the elite world of ballet, roughing up its conventional decorum with works featuring tortured psyches, damaged sexualities and a string of outsiders and misfits.
  • (9) Some short texts which were added in later times to the "Works of Hippocrates" ("Physician", "Precepts", "Decorum") provide us with some information on a physician's daily life (see also H.M. Koelbing, The Hippocratic physician at his patient's bedside, in Practitioner 224, 1980, 551-554).
  • (10) From Hippocrates ("Prognostic") to the hellenistic period ("Decorum"), we note an important change as to the revelation of a bad prognosis: Hippocrates advocates the blunt information of the patient when there is no hope for him; but his follower in a later century takes into consideration the patient's psychology.
  • (11) The once scruffy youth became a stickler for sartorial decorum.
  • (12) But the students who directly protest the tightening of these screws are condemned for their lack of political decorum.
  • (13) Aidan Dunne, for example, reviewing the exhibition in Dublin in 2007, recognised how a single blonde model, "unmistakably" herself, in 1966 led Freud to push "the bounds of decorum in terms of mainstream depictions of the human body considered not as a generic type but as, to use his own term, a 'naked portrait'".
  • (14) I am not sure Sir Alan has got the hang of grim austerity and quiet decorum.
  • (15) He doesn't show us sex, but it's always there, under the nightclothes of decorum.
  • (16) While Brad Pitt may get knickers left in his pocket, there is more decorum around the royals.
  • (17) Which makes me wonder: if philosophy is to be more "gender friendly", do philosophers have first to act, well, if not in more "ladylike" fashion, then at least with greater decorum?
  • (18) Even in Jerusalem on market days when I went to that place before I was married there had always been a gravity, a sense of people doing business who meant business, or preparing themselves with due decorum for the Sabbath.
  • (19) formulation at pH 11 for 2 h increases its potency against S. decorum larvae, suggesting an effect of an extralarval alkaline hydrolysis on the B.t.i.
  • (20) Decorum, maturity and tactfully quiet understanding must be maintained.