What's the difference between dire and grievous?

Dire


Definition:

  • (superl.) Ill-boding; portentous; as, dire omens.
  • (superl.) Evil in great degree; dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; lamentable.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Why is it so surprising to people that a boy like Chol, just out of conflict, has thought through the needs of his country in such a detailed way?” While Beah’s zeal is laudable, the situation in South Sudan is dire .
  • (2) It is that beautiful moment when the original Metamorphosis is destroyed so that it can be refashioned for a global community of readers in dire need of new forms of storytelling.
  • (3) In this investigation, reanalysis of responses to case vignettes obtained from 436 psychologists, psychiatrists, and internists revealed that on the issue of confidentiality management, these health care providers discriminate among cases involving: Premeditated harm to others, socially irresponsible acts with possible dire consequences to self or others, and minor theft.
  • (4) The report’s concluding chapters raised dire warning that the operations of contemporary child protection agencies were replicating many of the destructive dynamics of the Stolen Generations era.
  • (5) Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, warned Barack Obama in public remarks this month that history had shown “sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences”.
  • (6) Algeria had not scored a World Cup goal since they drew 1-1 with Northern Ireland at Mexico 1986, a run that took in five matches, including that dire 0-0 draw with England in Cape Town four years ago.
  • (7) Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire.
  • (8) High among the range of issues was the media dominance of the Globo group (whose journalists were chased away from demonstrations by an irate mob), inefficient use of public funds, forced relocations linked to Olympic real estate developments, the treatment of indigenous groups, dire inequality and excessive use of force by police in favela communities.
  • (9) Burrows had resigned as governor of Bank of Ireland, leaving the lender in dire straits, with big losses and mounting debt threatening its very survival.
  • (10) Yet the inability to get on in life is a now a major and growing problem for middle-class children and this group is in dire need of attention, it is expected to report.
  • (11) Vince Cable, their shadow chancellor, said: "The Liberal Democrats welcome the government's recognition that radical action is now needed, reflecting the dire and deteriorating position of the UK economy.
  • (12) Its willingness to ignore diplomatic convention and use its Kuala Lumpur embassy to conduct an extraterritorial assassination will be seen as setting a dire precedent that cannot be allowed to stand.
  • (13) What is clear, however, is that the reported escalation in fighting exacerbates the already dire humanitarian and human rights situation and the suffering of the Yemeni people,” said Ban’s spokesman, Farhan Haq.
  • (14) In a scene of young soldiers at rest for a few minutes at the front, he takes us into their heads: one full of dire forebodings, another singing, one trying to identify a bird on a tree – soldiers dreaming of girls’ breasts, dogs, sausages and poetry.
  • (15) Despite its own dire predictions on the potential impact of climate change , the government's impact assessment for Flood Re does not take account of " changing flood risk due to deterioration of existing flood defences [or] climate change".
  • (16) The situation is so dire the National Audit Office has warned that by 2020 schools will be worse funded than at any time since the mid-90s.
  • (17) John Macgregor, an aid worker who has been accompanying teams delivering food and water to Battambang, described the area as a vast inland sea where conditions are dire and malnutrition is common.
  • (18) But they are also the stuff of nightmares, because if an electricity grid is overwhelmed by demand, the consequences can be dire, as India discovered recently , when more than 700 million people were left without power.
  • (19) Thousands of jobs that would have been created will be lost and the knock-on effect will be so dire.
  • (20) While big businesses have enjoyed access to new couriers, Royal Mail itself eventually reached such a dire state that the Hooper report urged the government to rewrite the law to clarify that competition was a mixed blessing.

Grievous


Definition:

  • (a.) Causing grief or sorrow; painful; afflictive; hard to bear; offensive; harmful.
  • (a.) Characterized by great atrocity; heinous; aggravated; flagitious; as, a grievous sin.
  • (a.) Full of, or expressing, grief; showing great sorrow or affliction; as, a grievous cry.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) With grievous amazement, never self-pitying but sometimes bordering on a sort of numbed wonderment, Levi records the day-to-day personal and social history of the camp, noting not only the fine gradations of his own descent, but the capacity of some prisoners to cut a deal and strike a bargain, while others, destined by their age or character for the gas ovens, follow "the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea".
  • (2) The Meikhtila district chairman, Tin Maung Soe, said one Buddhist man was sentenced to five years' imprisonment on Thursday for causing grievous harm in connection with the killing of two Muslim men.
  • (3) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
  • (4) "This has very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the country," the military said.
  • (5) Yet his team held out when the consequences could have been much more grievous.
  • (6) On Sunday, his department was confronted with the deadliest mass shooting in American history: at least 50 dead, 53 wounded, many in grievous condition.
  • (7) Meanwhile he was grievously wanting in that other great, complementary task - the building of his state in the making.
  • (8) But they did Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a grievous, hurtful, harmful wrong on many levels and this includes failing to include a single positive word about us anywhere in the constitution of modern Australia.
  • (9) The Chelsea manager responded with a smile and a little wave, then settled back to watch his team inflict another grievous setback to Moyes's first season at this level.
  • (10) For Arsenal it would have been a grievous setback if they had allowed a side with these shortcomings to pinch a late equaliser.
  • (11) It adds grievous insult to injury that a mother going through the turmoil that Fatima was experiencing should have to listen to this response.
  • (12) When Blair Peach was struck on the head during the demonstration against the National Front, he was a victim not only of the police but of a barely suppressed public attitude – encouraged by a large portion of the media – that people who went on such protests were troublemakers who deserved all that they got – and if police officers cracked a few heads, then they had probably been grievously provoked by the troublemakers.
  • (13) For him, "a world in which we are no longer burdened by debt, credit, hock, mortgage, HP, might not be a grievous loss but a deliverance … a more modest and more prudent way of living".
  • (14) Wolfsburg’s André Schürrle ends CSKA Moscow’s Champions League hopes Read more Depay had a difficult game against his old club and his first half-season at Old Trafford is straying dangerously close to the point where his confidence suffers grievous damage.
  • (15) But in 2000 he was jailed for grievous bodily harm after stabbing a man in the face following a row that was reported at the time to have had racial overtones.
  • (16) Abortion law "ijhad" in Kuwait was amended in 1982 to permit abortion where either grievous bodily harm to the mother is imminent or it is proved that the baby will suffer incurable brain damage or severe mental retardation.
  • (17) My friend was grievously injured and bleeding profusely.
  • (18) All three deny causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
  • (19) Asked about the potential consequences of the executions, Abbott said: “We will be letting Indonesia know in absolutely unambiguous terms that we feel grievously let down.” He said he did not want to “prejudice the best possible relations with a very important friend and neighbour but I’ve got to say that we can’t just ignore this kind of thing if the perfectly reasonable representations we are making to Indonesia are ignored by them”.
  • (20) March 2009 Butler is convicted of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to 19 months in prison.

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