What's the difference between dirge and epic?

Dirge


Definition:

  • (a.) A piece of music of a mournful character, to accompany funeral rites; a funeral hymn.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) His wink-wink, nod-nod racist slogan, “Make America great again,” together with his apocalyptic dirge of a convention, left exposed and unguarded a flank that is usually the Republicans’ specialty.
  • (2) In some establishments, mournful dirges played while coffins were carried through the crowds of drinkers; in others, the walls were hung with black crepe.
  • (3) The band appear to be playing several verses of the English dirge.
  • (4) There is, it seems, a political divide in CBeebies appreciation, judging by a recent Spectator article entitled “ Agitprop for Toddlers ” in which the author compared a wildlife programme on the channel, in which “a rainbow nation of children [march] around the British countryside singing ‘Let’s make sure we recycle every day’”, to “one of those Dear Leader dirges you see in North Korea”.
  • (5) As Claudius said in Hamlet: “With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage.” Weddings, to me, feel heavy with expectation, pregnant with emotion, saturated with hope, fear and hard-to-keep promises.
  • (6) This dirge of a ballad is performed by a woman whose facial expression befits someone burying their pet dog.
  • (7) Due to an editing error, the quote, “With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage”, was misattributed to Hamlet.
  • (8) The dirge can be kept for British sport such as the Olympics, Andy Murray doing well and the ones where you sit down."
  • (9) Such legislation would be a royal pain the arse in the UK, our dirge leading to a spike in suicide rates around tea-time.
  • (10) Today I see England as a continuum, with football yobs at one end and Eton yobs at the other, and Morrissey dirging about lost seaside resorts somewhere in the middle.
  • (11) "That is the mother of all dirges, but I'm not too keen on Flower of Scotland either.
  • (12) Across the internet, thousands of music fans looking for Thicke's raunchy, cowbell-stoked summer jam stumbled instead on a recording of Beckwith's sombre dirge , released on the 2010 CD Jalsaghar .
  • (13) The Danish one is a bit of a dirge and should really only be used as the closing credits of a lunchtime documentary on some shortwave radio station.
  • (14) FIFA games aren’t exactly known for hilarity, so these shows are a very welcome change of tone from the brain-breaking Europop dirge found in EA’s club football game year after year.
  • (15) Japan's is bloody miserable, to tell the truth, the sort of dirge you'd expect to hear pinging off the walls of a church in the Outer Hebridies.
  • (16) These are the poems: "Burbank," "Gerontion," "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," "A Cooking Egg," and the posthumously published "Dirge".
  • (17) BECAUSE WHEN PEOPLE HEAR THE CAN-DO OPTIMISM OF THE YES CAMPAIGN UP AGAINST THE CAN’T-DO DIRGE OF THE NO CAMPAIGN THEN THEY CHOOSE YES.
  • (18) A Hague speech became a Foreign Office dirge, awash in wars on terror, wars on want, wars on rape and a world of “unacceptable” regimes.
  • (19) 9.49pm GMT “Six priests wailed an a cappella dirge as the open funeral casket was carried through the assembled throng and brought to the stage at Independence Square,” begins Shaun Walker’s (@ ShaunWalker7 ) dispatch from Kiev today: The body, wrapped in a white cloth with just the head visible, was that of just one of at least 77 people to have died this week in Kiev, but its arrival pricked thousands of eyes with tears, as the huge crowds that had gathered bowed their heads in prayer.
  • (20) There are certainly a good many less dirge-like than ours.

Epic


Definition:

  • (a.) Narrated in a grand style; pertaining to or designating a kind of narrative poem, usually called an heroic poem, in which real or fictitious events, usually the achievements of some hero, are narrated in an elevated style.
  • (n.) An epic or heroic poem. See Epic, a.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) His first ball reaches Ali at hip height and he flicks him to fine leg for a boundary that takes him to a quite epic century.
  • (2) President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government has joined MPs, bloggers and local media in denouncing the newly-released Warner Brothers epic, 300, as a calculated attempt to demonise Iran at a time of intensifying US pressure over the country's nuclear programme.
  • (3) The 2014 MTV Video Music Awards didn’t achieve the same degree of controversy as last year’s celebration of tongues, twerking and teddy bears , but between a speech by a homeless teen, an ill-timed wardrobe malfunction, and Beyoncé’s spectacular, epic, show-stopping finale, there were nevertheless a few moments worth watching.
  • (4) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Global trade unions called the collapse ‘mass industrial homicide’, while Vogue magazine described it as ‘tragedy on an epic scale’.
  • (5) This is a report on our experience with the EPICS C (Coultronics) cytometric flux apparatus, a screening cell analyzer, employing a laser ray (2 or 5 watts); we obtained good results to analyze immunologically-tagged mononuclear blood cells with or without prior separation: for rhythm, repeatability, and contamination.
  • (6) In the latest round of the epic divorce battle between Michelle and Scot Young, the judge, Mr Justice Moor, is making a fresh attempt to discover how much the property dealer is worth.
  • (7) But here he is, feeling as if this epic encounter with his own music is something he’d rather not deal with.
  • (8) RSL kick off... 3.09am GMT Speaking of epic... …this might be a spurious link, but I don't care.
  • (9) As he described, with something approaching relish, the horrifying effect of a desperate eurozone willing to destroy the British economy, our industry and our society, purely to protect itself, I was reminded of the epic Last Judgement by John Martin, now in the Tate, which depicts the terrifying chaos as the good are separated from the evil damned.
  • (10) It was made into a silent film in 1925, and then one of the definitive Hollywood epics in 1959, starring Charlton Heston alongside 10,000 extras and 2,500 horses – it became a huge box office success and won 11 Oscars.
  • (11) Armitage's stage version, commissioned for the in-the-round Royal Exchange in Manchester, a space that can encompass both the intimate and the epic, reworks The Iliad , adding an ending Homer never wrote.
  • (12) Friday's ruling, combined with Trafigura's epic failure to suppress information, suggests that courts may be less willing to issue such injunctions in future.
  • (13) After a couple of weeks they started sending me on epic coffee runs – it's quite a balancing act to transport 10 skinny cappuccinos.
  • (14) I never felt stirrings of faith – apart from when faced with natural wonders such as the multilayered celestial splendour of a night sky, my newborn babies, an epic coastline – so I embraced tolerance and tried to remain open to the multitude of organised belief systems I don’t share.
  • (15) Those kind of moments are epic, like Cathy Freeman in the Sydney Olympics.
  • (16) A rsenal versus Manchester United was a fixture that dominated the chase for trophies in the late 90s and early Noughties – a rivalry in no small part formed by an epic FA Cup semi-final replay in 1999.
  • (17) The epic struggle to keep Greece solvent and in the eurozone intensified on Saturday night amid signs of a looming crisis within the anti-austerity government that took Europe ablaze barely three months ago.
  • (18) It would be an epic, devastatingly hilarious battle on the scale of Godzilla and Mothra.
  • (19) Rather than head back towards the Saas Valley in the east via Grächen, we head west, taking a train to St Niklaus, a cable car to Jungu, then hike east to Gruben, to stay at the historic but simple Hotel Schwarzhorn, before ending our epic journey with a final night in luxury, at the charming hotel Bella Tola in St-Luc.
  • (20) Titanic now comes in behind 1977's Star Wars, 1965's The Sound of Music, 1982's ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, and even the 1956 Charlton Heston biblical epic The Ten Commandments.