What's the difference between draconian and oppressive?

Draconian


Definition:

  • (a.) Pertaining to Draco, a famous lawgiver of Athens, 621 b. c.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Gwendolen Morgan, the lawyer at Bindmans dealing with the case, said: "We have grave concerns about the decision to use this draconian power to detain our client for nine hours on Sunday – for what appear to be highly questionable motives, which we will be asking the high court to consider.
  • (2) Chris Pavlou, former vice chairman of Laiki, told Channel 4 news that Anastasiades was given little option by the troika but to accept the draconian terms, which force savers to take a hit for the first time in the fifth bailout of a eurozone country.
  • (3) An earlier debt sustainability analysis was leaked in the days leading up to the Greek referendum and helped harden opposition to the (less draconian) terms then on offer.
  • (4) In its place, the regulator will impose a more draconian regime of checks that will include an assessment of banks' business models.
  • (5) New legislation that imposes draconian fines on participants in unsanctioned demonstrations was rushed through the Duma this month and signed into law by Putin on Friday.
  • (6) Mandelson, who today unveiled plans to introduce measures including suspending the internet connections of illegal downloaders , argued that while less draconian than the French plan, the UK's approach would be tough enough to tackle online piracy.
  • (7) The chancellor was less draconian on child benefit, science and infrastructure spending than feared.
  • (8) The Malaysian prime minister has announced he is scrapping the country's draconian security laws and relaxing media controls, in what he billed as a daringly bold package of reforms.
  • (9) It is impossible to see how a regulator operating under rules imposed by politicians, and enforced by draconian and discriminatory provisions for damages and costs in civil cases, could be said to be either voluntary or independent."
  • (10) "This draconian law would have been a massive, unnecessary extension of the state's power," he said.
  • (11) One of its board members is retired Major General Andrew James “Jim” Molan, co-architect of Tony Abbott’s “Operation Sovereign Borders,” the draconian program relying on the remote island detention centres condemned as cruel and inhumane by multiple respected human rights organisations.
  • (12) The ruling socialists have been criticised by trade unions and workers for already passing draconian austerity measures aimed at saving €4.8bn by the end of the year.
  • (13) The island city-state has draconian laws about many things , from pornography to tipping.
  • (14) Latin America remains a bastion of draconian anti-abortion legislation, where the termination of a pregnancy is almost universally considered a criminal act.
  • (15) Many colonial laws, including draconian statutes against " sedition " and "offending religious sensibilities" remained on the books.
  • (16) It is essential we reject the most draconian proposals on the table and support other countries who are seeking to implement flexible and positive language,” she said.
  • (17) But there are plenty of pieces of anti-Cuban legislation and trade embargoes still in force, including the sweeping and draconian 1996 Helms-Burton act , which penalises foreign companies trading with Cuba.
  • (18) But he also made clear he had heeded the industry's warnings that banks could move overseas if tax changes were too draconian.
  • (19) Approved memories can be purchased in the gift shop.” But it transpires that the draconian rule, which was first introduced for the blockbusting David Bowie exhibition in 2013, has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property.
  • (20) But the draconian proposals did not find much favour with either the drinks industry or the Department of Health , which immediately said that it did not support the introduction of graphic health warnings on bottles and tins.

Oppressive


Definition:

  • (a.) Unreasonably burdensome; unjustly severe, rigorous, or harsh; as, oppressive taxes; oppressive exactions of service; an oppressive game law.
  • (a.) Using oppression; tyrannical; as, oppressive authority or commands.
  • (a.) Heavy; overpowering; hard to be borne; as, oppressive grief or woe.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I hope this movement will continue and spread for it has within itself the power to stand up to fascism, be victorious in the face of extremism and say no to oppressive political powers everywhere.” Appearing via videolink from Tehran, and joined by London mayor Sadiq Khan and Palme d’Or winner Mike Leigh, Farhadi said: “We are all citizens of the world and I will endeavour to protect and spread this unity.” The London screening of The Salesman on Sunday evening wasintended to be a show of unity and strength against Trump’s travel ban, which attempted to block arrivals in the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
  • (2) Much less obvious – except in the fictional domain of the C Thomas Howell film Soul Man – is why someone would want to “pass” in the other direction and voluntarily take on the weight of racial oppression.
  • (3) But some warn that oppression of the minority is heading towards breaking point.
  • (4) 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".
  • (5) The terrorists know that if Iraq and Afghanistan survive their assault, come through their travails, seize the opportunity the future offers, then those countries will stand not just as nations liberated from oppression, but as a lesson to humankind everywhere and a profound antidote to the poison of religious extremism.
  • (6) But there are very oppressed people here and I have to stay with them.
  • (7) Ukip accuses Theresa May of condoning these “symbols of the oppression of women”.
  • (8) Similarly at world level, it considers the struggles and efforts by the miserable and oppressed nations for achievement of their legitimate rights and independence as their due rights, because people have the right to liberate their countries from colonialism and obtain their rights.
  • (9) He added that the producers were also seeking to educate a new generation about the system of apartheid through which South Africa's white minority oppressed the black majority for more than 40 years up to 1990.
  • (10) "This false notion of choice, which is increasingly used to justify the oppression of women," says Ellis.
  • (11) The study of 106 pregnant women engaged in microbiological synthesis production revealed the tendency to increasing genitalia contamination by Candida yeast-like fungi, including fungi-protein producers, and also oppression of immunologic reactivity in comparison with nonpregnant women and the control group.
  • (12) A statement from al-Shabaab on Monday said the latest attack – the deadliest since Westgate – was revenge for the "Kenyan government's brutal oppression of Muslims in Kenya through coercion, intimidation and extrajudicial killings of Muslim scholars".
  • (13) A 46-year-old woman occasionally experienced palpitation of short duration and chest oppression since 1977.
  • (14) "We should oppose the practices of the big bullying the small, the strong domineering over the weak and the rich oppressing the poor."
  • (15) Behind the dancing girls and schmaltzy lyrics that usually characterise pop songs, these men act as the all-oppressing eye of the industry: telling female singers that weight loss and sexual objectification are the only feasible routes to stardom; stripping down women in music videos to their underwear while leaving their male counterparts untouched.
  • (16) Choosing the example of prisoners' voting rights, which the ECHR has ordered the UK to implement, the supreme court justice observed that the issue "has nothing to do with the oppression of vulnerable minorities".
  • (17) On Sunday Assange said: "Will it [the US] return to and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world?"
  • (18) A 62 year old man, who had underlying diseases of pneumoconiosis and hypertensive heart disease, visited Chikuho Rosai Hospital complaining of chest oppression and general fatigue on Feb. 7, 1987.
  • (19) We did not perform a sexy version of oppression or create a teasing "naughty" campaign.
  • (20) He is sexism, male domination, and oppression against women personified.