What's the difference between distraught and overwrought?

Distraught


Definition:

  • (p. p.) of Distract
  • (a.) Torn asunder; separated.
  • (a.) Distracted; perplexed.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Their families are said be be distraught at the news and have been clinging to the hope their daughters would want to come home.
  • (2) They’re all really distraught because this is another new year for them on Nauru,” she said.
  • (3) Following the statement, distraught relatives of Chinese passengers attacked Malaysia for announcing the crash and loss of life without direct proof, and for wasting the best chance to rescue those on board.
  • (4) Aware of the likely sensitivity around the issue, programme-makers had already made last-minute cuts to the New Year's Eve episode, including shots of a distraught Ronnie touching the cold hand of her dead baby, and Kat in blood-soaked pyjamas after her husband finds her haemorrhaging in her bed.
  • (5) He’s still distraught at not getting in to Old Trafford.
  • (6) And even though she was visibly distraught after the verdict was read out she feels that it wasn't going to be any other way.
  • (7) Distraught, I brought it into the office on Monday to gauge the opinions of my fashion colleagues.
  • (8) David Miliband was leaning hard towards quitting two days ago – "too distraught, too disappointed" said one ally – but if he had any doubts they were settled by the spat over the Iraq war he had with Harriet Harman , picked up by the TV cameras, during his brother's keynote speech to conference as leader on Tuesday.
  • (9) The Duchess was left distraught and broke down sobbing during the proceedings.
  • (10) The way everyone was distraught at the final whistle, meant this game was always going to be like this.
  • (11) She added, they are "scared and distraught, can't believe it's true, don't want it to be true".
  • (12) Those who want to say something about the atrocities in the Middle East may indeed be genuinely distraught, they may feel that the need to pass on this visual information places them on some unquestionable moral high ground.
  • (13) An elderly woman, distraught over the recent death of her husband, was found dead of an apparent suicide.
  • (14) Earlier in the day, Anthony Little, the brother-in-law of the uspect, emerged from the house and told NBC4 the family were "distraught".
  • (15) Aaron Campbell was at his girlfriend’s flat and was said to be distraught over the death of his brother, whom he had nursed before he succumbed to heart disease and kidney failure.
  • (16) Sitting with the child and parents in my office and seeing how distraught they all were was heartbreaking.
  • (17) At one point, he became so distraught that Judge Brian Keith interrupted proceedings to tell Adoboli that he shouldn't be embarrassed about becoming overrun by his emotions, and that it gave the jury a chance to "see the man behind the name".
  • (18) The action was described by Miss F as having left her mother, who had no involvement in the disagreement, "totally distraught" in the last weeks of her life.
  • (19) He is able to speak but obviously he’s absolutely distraught – he’s absolutely broken.
  • (20) Distraught and weeping, she was surrounded by reporters and cameramen.

Overwrought


Definition:

  • () of Overwork
  • (p. p. & a.) Wrought upon excessively; overworked; overexcited.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) With the students back, parliament in session and that Killers album slowly being revealed as an overwrought dud, what better time for the greatest minds of their generation to go down the pub and invent a new genre?
  • (2) No one assumes that New Zealand will have an impact in South Africa, yet insouciance is an asset when other sides are so overwrought.
  • (3) Lost in all of the cyber-Armageddon rhetoric is Sony’s own negligent security practices, which is maybe where some of Hollywood’s own overwrought ire should be pointed, rather than blaming journalists for reporting.
  • (4) The season premiere, which aired on Sunday, has everything its returning fans demand: shocks and quips and china sauce-boats, and overwrought manners and hats.
  • (5) One morning we had a text vote for whether or not to play Curtain Call by the Damned, in its full 18 minutes of overwrought gothic glory.
  • (6) Overwrought tell-all memoirs are liable to elicit this response even from those who are not directly affected.
  • (7) One of the older ones actually burst into tears, somewhat overwrought by the whole experience.
  • (8) I, for one, enjoyed the overwrought silliness of series two.
  • (9) He is overwrought and half-asleep, and so Forster risks giving him purple cravings for "big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science can reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend".
  • (10) The 34-year-old was as overwrought as any testosterone-maddened youngster but could still have contrived a triumph.
  • (11) It’s as if too many overwrought, mainly male, pub bores have been allowed to take over what is, never forget, a vote for the whole country’s future.
  • (12) Should he ever need alternative employment - and, after all, he might - Brown might consider a career writing poems in overwrought Hallmark greetings cards.
  • (13) The understandable but overwrought attacks on Saif Gaddafi that followed his embrace of his father, clan and regime in Tripoli at the start of the uprising, have made it extremely difficult to pursue a diplomatic track in Libya.
  • (14) All of which she squares up to with Boudiccan fortitude (overwrought grandma years).
  • (15) There is a danger for Franzen, that an author who is not a native user of the internet will be exposed in the way in which he writes about it, and there are a few false notes in Purity; an off use of the term “going viral”, a tin-eared reference to Jeff Bezos, and the overwrought phrase “moused and clicked” to describe the activity of industrious interns at their desks.
  • (16) Whether overwrought or merely unlucky, Liverpool could not capitalise on initial ebullience and fell behind nine minutes from the interval.
  • (17) In a number of later films, he is often seen trying to direct some overwrought superstar.
  • (18) It certainly paved the way for two acclaimed debut albums in the trip-hop vein – Portishead's dense and sometimes overwrought Dummy (1994) and Tricky's darkly mesmeric Maxinquaye from 1995 – as well as the more well-mannered beats of acts such as Morcheeba and Zero 7.
  • (19) For me, it’s just indulging my passion for overwrought choreography, pure performance and cheesy music.
  • (20) I felt odd: overtired, overwrought, unpleasantly like my brain had been removed and my skull stuffed with something like microwaved aluminium foil, dinted, charred and shorting with sparks.