What's the difference between discomfit and thwart?

Discomfit


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To scatter in fight; to put to rout; to defeat.
  • (v. t.) To break up and frustrate the plans of; to balk/ to throw into perplexity and dejection; to disconcert.
  • (a.) Discomfited; overthrown.
  • (n.) Rout; overthrow; discomfiture.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But the demise of white supremacy does not mean the end of white people, just of their supremacy; given the widespread conflation of the two by discomfited white people, perhaps we do need a month to teach us all the difference.
  • (2) (Of course, she was also perfectly aware of the feminist content, what it said about the disgusted-attracted-contemptuous male gaze, but she preferred the art to ask the questions, discomfit, not preach.)
  • (3) It has been just over two decades since genocide was last perpetrated on European soil, a discomfiting memory that has been largely buried in a continent now intent on stopping the arrival of escapees from more recent mass murder.
  • (4) In that discomfiting political situation, the party’s instinct is to fall back on the NHS.
  • (5) Cameron looked discomfited.” It fell to William Hague to defend the prime minister in the spin room.
  • (6) On 16 March 2012, the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge released two discomfiting documents from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.
  • (7) ISS said it was understandable that Shell investors would feel “discomfited” by the significant volatility in global crude prices but added: “It is worth recognising, however, that the spot price today may be of very little value in assessing the strategic opportunity of a transaction whose benefits will be realised over decades.
  • (8) Its high-profile role fighting Isis in Iraq, Assad’s retention of control in Syria with the help of its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebel takeover in Yemen have all been deeply discomfiting for the Saudis.
  • (9) Just as Blatter was crushed by the banner headlines in his native Switzerland when the FBI swooped, so Platini will have been most discomfited by the front pages in a France.
  • (10) It was one of the tricks of Hoffman's elegantly cruel performance that when Freddie met his bloody end, the audience was likely to feel relieved and complicit; he was such a doggedly discomfiting presence, it was clear he could be stilled only by death.
  • (11) Most people would be discomfited to learn how detailed a reconstruction of their lives their mobile phone operator could produce if required – right down to a pretty good guess at when they have been speeding in their cars.
  • (12) For politicians, it can be “too discomfiting” to accept that contemporary culture is a significant contributor to the problem of emerging extremist views.
  • (13) Now that the eruption has taken place, we blunder in with our prescriptions on democracy, only mildly discomfited by the amount of our hardware that has facilitated the long history of oppression.
  • (14) In the UK, we are still slightly discomfited by the idea of baring all in a confessional essay, partly, one presumes, because we are restrained by a sort of cultural prudishness, but also because we do not wish to appear self-indulgent.
  • (15) Later, her memory of it would be a blur that left her with the discomfiting sense that, at least in some people's minds, the medicines were being given "for the greater good", to get the exhausted, frightened staff out more quickly, as there were too many patients who were immobile.
  • (16) His collaborations with Peter Gabriel reflected Gabriel's restless, discomfiting aesthetic just as well as the Floyd designs had chimed with their music: the artwork for his self-titled third solo album (aka Melt), for example, consisted of a single shot of Gabriel's face, apparently melting off his skull , something achieved by the simple expedient of smearing a still-developing Polaroid (a technique later known as Krimsography).
  • (17) There will be laughs, Shanbag emphasises – but Arpana will not shirk the unsettling side of All's Well , one of Shakespeare's most discomfiting plays , the ostensibly comic plot of which (a woman pursues the man she wants so doggedly that she ends up tricking him into bed) is at odds with its riddling, uncertain tone.
  • (18) The people who describe human beings in this way often have scores of pictures, including images obviously taken without consent that discomfited the subject.
  • (19) Those two dissenting members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), Rachel Brand and Elisebeth Collins Cook, both lawyers in the George W Bush administration, did not endorse bulk metadata collection so much as they were discomfited by the scope of their colleagues’ castigation of its legality, propriety and utility.
  • (20) But Arron is probably at his most discomfiting on the gathering darkness of Europe’s economics.

Thwart


Definition:

  • (a.) Situated or placed across something else; transverse; oblique.
  • (a.) Fig.: Perverse; crossgrained.
  • (a.) Thwartly; obliquely; transversely; athwart.
  • (prep.) Across; athwart.
  • (n.) A seat in an open boat reaching from one side to the other, or athwart the boat.
  • (v. t.) To move across or counter to; to cross; as, an arrow thwarts the air.
  • (v. t.) To cross, as a purpose; to oppose; to run counter to; to contravene; hence, to frustrate or defeat.
  • (v. i.) To move or go in an oblique or crosswise manner.
  • (v. i.) Hence, to be in opposition; to clash.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The disappointing weather at Easter left beaches deserted but some Britons, who were determined to enjoy the outdoors this time round, have already had their plans thwarted by the weather, taking to websites such as ukcampsite.co.uk to swap tales of woe, such as farmers calling to cancel bookings because sites were waterlogged.
  • (2) Bryan Hopkins Sheffield • David Cameron says he wants to tackle segregation between schools ( Four steps to thwart creation of ‘a barbaric realm’ , 21 July).
  • (3) As for the speaker in parliament Thura Shwe Mann, a former general, he has formed an improbable alliance with Aung San Suu Kyi, on the assumption that she might help him thwart the plans of his former cronies.
  • (4) In the recent local and European parliament elections, Labour gained 300 councillors and boosted its number of MEPs, but saw Ukip thwart its progress in key target areas, make gains in traditional party heartlands and top the European poll.
  • (5) But concerns about a slowing economy, jobs, civil rights and a lack of progress in the Kurdish peace process appear to have combined with worries that Erdoğan could assume quasi-dictatorial powers to thwart the president’s ambitions.
  • (6) A standoff between the two houses of parliament threatens to thwart a government-backed crackdown on multinational tax avoidance and a Labor-backed plan to increase tax transparency.
  • (7) So President Mujica may be thinking: "why not take the risk and embrace the possibility of becoming the first marijuana hero and the man who thwarted drug dealers?"
  • (8) The cataractogenic effect of oxyradicals, however, can be thwarted by nutritional and metabolic antioxidants such as ascorbate, vitamin E, and pyruvate.
  • (9) However, the over-riding view is that with Global's plan to buy GMG Radio outright all but thwarted, senior executives at German-owned Bauer will be breathing a sigh of relief.
  • (10) Experts say there are other arms of the federal octopus that could be squeezed in a bid to thwart Obama’s deferred action schemes, but even that would not affect the directive that tells immigration officials to focus on deporting “felons, not families”.
  • (11) The solution is for Hathaway to spend a year in sarky Manchester, where her attempts to go jogging will be thwarted by 324 days of rain, and if she so much as thinks about telling a Mancunian barmaid that she has poured those lagers fantastically well, she will swiftly learn an aloofness not taught in any American drama school.
  • (12) The report finds the company "deliberately" tried to "thwart" the 2005-6 Metropolitan police investigation into phone hacking carried out by the tabloid.
  • (13) But imperial Britain was not thwarted in any of these wars – however questionable we may now judge those conflicts to have been.
  • (14) This year the weather has tended to thwart these hopes, although after "the summer of sport" we might all need a break.
  • (15) Qerdaha is the heart of Alawite Syria , a hub for senior army officers and Shabiha, the pro-Assad militia accused of tremendous brutality in their three-year campaign to thwart the rebel uprising.
  • (16) 1.44am BST Rangers 2-1 Kings, 12:50, 2nd period Lewis stick handles towards the net but is thwarted by McDonagh, who is all over the place this game.
  • (17) The secret vote was an attempt to thwart the bill before it is put to a general vote.
  • (18) Part of the problem is procedural: that the will of the church’s parliament, the General Synod, is easily thwarted by a tiny minority of its members.
  • (19) Chloro substituents in the ring of other methoxylated benzoic acids also arrested their normal metabolism by the Nocardia: an ortho-chloro substituent thwarted both demethylation and ring-opening.
  • (20) The Liberal Democrat input is the second time they have helped thwart Gove's policies.