What's the difference between derisive and sardonic?

Derisive


Definition:

  • (a.) Expressing, serving for, or characterized by, derision.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In fact the then president, Amadou Toumani Touré, known as "ATT" more out of derision than any sense of affection, was viewed as deeply corrupt and incapable of delivering the changes that Mali – still one of the five least-developed countries in the world – needed.
  • (2) Spanish football fans’ habit of waving white hankies tends to be derisive, signifying that they wish a hapless manager to be put out of their club’s misery.
  • (3) Waitrose evokes strong opinions: from sniffy derision about the supermarket's perceived airs and graces to expressions of joy from middle-class incomers when their gentrified area is blessed with a branch.
  • (4) Striker Gonzalo Higuaín was also the victim of fan derision when he came on to replace Karim Benzema in the second half, but Karanka insisted the Argentinian still has the backing of the club.
  • (5) And at the same time, speaking to black America, he branded Frazier an Uncle Tom, turning him into an object of derision and scorn.
  • (6) "I think 20 millisieverts is safe but I don't think it's good," said Itaru Watanabe of the education ministry, drawing howls of derision from the audience of participants.
  • (7) At which point – obviously – you reach the stubborn limits of the debate: from even the most supposedly imaginative Labour people as much as any Tories, such heresies would presumably be greeted with sneering derision.
  • (8) The launch of a Greene King “craft” range in 2013 brought angry howls of derision .
  • (9) He has been derided in these pages, but that derision is surpassed by the venomous hatred of the Daily Mail , which loathes the Cameron government in any case and particularly despised Mitchell in his previous job.
  • (10) And yet for someone confronting futility and derision, he appears remarkably cheerful.
  • (11) For reasons which are unfathomable Daniel became a target for derision, abuse and systematic cruelty."
  • (12) The autonomy of sport must be guaranteed.” After attracting derision for last week appearing to suggest that football could bring peace to the Crimea through the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Blatter returned to the subject in an otherwise low-key address.
  • (13) You couldn’t make it up, could you?” He hoots with derisive laughter.
  • (14) Another theory, which goes back in some form to ancient Greek philosophy, argues that all laughter is an expression of superiority: it is, in other words, always an aggressive response, a form of derision or mockery (laughing at, rather than with).
  • (15) The AU delegation - made up of South Africa , Uganda, Mauritania, Congo-Brazzaville and Mali - left the talks looking glum, without making a public comment and to the derisive shouts of the protesters outside the hotel.
  • (16) Gold swiftly retweeted the picture, prompting widespread derision, before explaining his error by claiming he had not realised it was an image of Antonio but while the winger was not offended, the label stuck.
  • (17) The explanation was greeted with derision by Kenyans on Twitter.
  • (18) He was very firm of purpose and yet a gay, exuberant, laughing man – gloom, cynicism, derision, despair, all peculiarly Irish devils, could not hold up their heads in his company.
  • (19) But the easy derision for those public figures probably grows from the sense that music, acting and even reporting all are easy pursuits.
  • (20) Additional information provided indicated that the most helpful categories of interventions included (1) validation; (2) advocacy; (3) empathic understanding; and (4) absence of derision or contempt.

Sardonic


Definition:

  • (a.) Forced; unnatural; insincere; hence, derisive, mocking, malignant, or bitterly sarcastic; -- applied only to a laugh, smile, or some facial semblance of gayety.
  • (a.) Of, pertaining to, or resembling, a kind of linen made at Colchis.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It’s a sardonic but good-natured account of being non-white in modern Australia.
  • (2) Harrison Ford (Han Solo) had had a small part in George Lucas's American Grafitti, but was working as a carpenter when he was cast as the sardonic space smuggler, and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) had appeared briefly in the 1975 Warren Beatty comedy Shampoo.
  • (3) In the digital era, Hill and his team can sample and sardonically alter material in the week it is transmitted.
  • (4) People talk the same way about Angela Chase, the sardonic and sentimental heroine of My So-Called Life , the teen TV series that began Danes's career in 1994.
  • (5) The king sardonically replies that it would in fact make people merely acquire the appearance of wisdom, and that it would make them forgetful of how to remember.
  • (6) Entertainment Weekly later reported that sardonic space smuggler Solo and bounty hunter Fett would also get their own films, and there have also been hints that Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine could return.
  • (7) Han definitely shoots first (and asks questions later) Lucas and fans have debated for decades whether the sardonic space scoundrel was originally intended to shoot bounty hunter Greedo only after the alien fired his blaster first in the Mos Eisley Cantina in 1977’s saga opener A New Hope, but Abrams clearly has no such qualms about showing the elder Solo as a quick-on-the-draw kind of guy.
  • (8) The Han Solo film will reportedly portray a younger version of the sardonic space smuggler, and will be set in the period between 2005 prequel movie Revenge of the Sith and the film that introduced the character, 1977's Star Wars .
  • (9) The Daily Mail wondered sardonically last week what they talked about over breakfast.
  • (10) I don’t know where they will find a place for the replay, maybe in a morning when we play in an afternoon,” said the sardonic Liverpool manager following his team’s ninth game in 29 days.
  • (11) The Oscar-winning Welsh actor has joined a cast that already includes Toby Jones and Bill Nighy in the lead roles of pompous Captain Mainwaring and his sardonic second-in-command Sergeant Wilson, the roles made famous by Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier in Jimmy Perry and David Croft’s original TV show.
  • (12) 3.26pm GMT A rather sardonic take on Chris Smith’s announcement that the dredging of the Somerset levels should start.
  • (13) One sardonic comment on Twitter summed up the widespread reaction: " There are no black men in Plymouth ," observed Chris Terry.
  • (14) Sardonic recoil against them (as in Shem's novel House of God) by residents--a professionally sanctioned response, deflecting what might otherwise be unendurable demands on their varied quotas of pity.
  • (15) "Well," a sudden, sardonic smile, "it is, but with enormous amounts of irony.
  • (16) A younger version of Solo will instead return in a new spin-off , tipped to appear in 2018, with Dave Franco, Logan Lerman and Scott Eastwood reportedly among the frontrunners to play the sardonic space scoundrel.
  • (17) While Jimmy Kimmel’s success is built on his sardonic wit, Corden doesn’t seem to have a cynical bone in his body.
  • (18) Felipe Gonzalez, the former Spanish social democratic prime minister, remarked sardonically the other day that when he was a lad Franco claimed his was the Third Way between capitalism and communism(4).
  • (19) Harrison Ford has confirmed for the first time that he expects to return as sardonic space smuggler Han Solo in Disney's forthcoming new Star Wars film.
  • (20) Mark of Cain, that is,” he said, in his aggressively sardonic Stirling-accented way.