What's the difference between droll and quaint?

Droll


Definition:

  • (superl.) Queer, and fitted to provoke laughter; ludicrous from oddity; amusing and strange.
  • (n.) One whose practice it is to raise mirth by odd tricks; a jester; a buffoon; a merry-andrew.
  • (n.) Something exhibited to raise mirth or sport, as a puppet, a farce, and the like.
  • (v. i.) To jest; to play the buffoon.
  • (v. t.) To lead or influence by jest or trick; to banter or jest; to cajole.
  • (v. t.) To make a jest of; to set in a comical light.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "It's like revisiting an old world," says Topley-Bird, who is droll and spacey where Tricky is hyperactively chatty.
  • (2) Obama's roommates were Paul Carpenter, a blond southern Californian who occasionally took his friends surfing (bodysurfing, in Barry's case), and Imad Husain, an intellectual Pakistani with a droll sense of humour who grew up in Karachi (though his parents now lived in Dubai) and finished his secondary education at Bedford School in the UK.
  • (3) She is by far the most popular …" Ms Harman was careful not to smile at this gallant jibe, but most of the shadow cabinet thought it very droll and smiled happily.
  • (4) Patterson says that she felt the most sympathy for her father, quietly droll, music-loving, a former Japanese POW.
  • (5) Tom was unsuited to the home-improvement periodicals for which he wrote in the late 70s, but in 1980 his droll and quizzical reviews began to appear in New Music News, an underground rock weekly launched by Felix Dennis to fill the vacuum left by the strike-bound NME and Melody Maker.
  • (6) She is the drama's underdog, but Lindqvist's droll, bullish performance elicits the most memorable moments of humour and pathos (as well as several uncomfortable moments in that bikini).
  • (7) His show was loose and disconnected, delivered in a droll, semi-stoned style that allowed him to ramble gently from one topic to the next.
  • (8) Here he reviews games with droll and super-fast wit, against a backdrop of animation.
  • (9) What happened to the droll and down-to-earth candidate who, without a qualm, is now embracing the Bonapartist style of Charles de Gaulle's presidency?
  • (10) Fuck it.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Droll model: comedian Michael Che.
  • (11) "He was like, 'I've thrown parents in the pool before, don't make me throw you,'" says Tony, adopting a hangdog look and mimicking Murray in the lowest, most droll voice possible.
  • (12) Most of all, I will miss his style: his suave deportment; his droll sense of humour; his understatement and his physical energy; his articulacy; his charm; his grace.
  • (13) It's been significantly updated – the stand-out moment for me was when Beryl and Betty did a rap over Don't Stop Me Now (they do the words – "I'm a sex machine, ready to reload", which is droll for their dry delivery – but they also chat all the way through: "I think you were out of tune, there".
  • (14) In a presentation so droll that the people who came after him kicked off with "We're not going to be as enjoyable as that, I'm afraid", Haslam emphasised activity, more activity, sustainable activity – best of all, routine activity, that is built into your life and carries on regardless of the weather, or whether you've broken your arm.
  • (15) 1 Know thine enemy It is droll to observe nutritional advice at the public health level; governments and their agencies always approach obesity as though it were a problem of information or – in the popular phrasing – "awareness".
  • (16) Friday's launch was fun (cue Zuckerberg's droll status update: "Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on Nasdaq") but there's a tendency to see stock market flotations as the culmination of a company's existence.
  • (17) Every morning, he announces the location of each piece on his website and invites people to call a hotline for droll descriptions of the artwork's inspiration.
  • (18) Tristram is quite droll about the demands of the narrative, and describes the distance it puts between her and the disease as a kind of relief.
  • (19) His LinkedIn account is also testament to a droll sense of humour with a minimal CV.
  • (20) All very droll – but perhaps the self-proclaimed "cock of the walk" might like to think about letting the dust settle?

Quaint


Definition:

  • (a.) Prudent; wise; hence, crafty; artful; wily.
  • (a.) Characterized by ingenuity or art; finely fashioned; skillfully wrought; elegant; graceful; nice; neat.
  • (a.) Curious and fanciful; affected; odd; whimsical; antique; archaic; singular; unusual; as, quaint architecture; a quaint expression.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Once availed of the fallacy that athletes are role models, there’s a certain purity that feels almost quaint in an era of athlete as brand.
  • (2) That merriment is not just tankards and quaintness and mimsy Morris dancing, but a witty, angry and tender fire at the centre of Englishness.
  • (3) From the quaint market towns to the rolling countryside, this county is one of the many jewels in Great Britain’s crown,” he said.
  • (4) At the advent of the web, Yahoo quaintly believed it could use editors to catalogue all the content online, but quickly learned that that wouldn't scale, as we say these days.
  • (5) John Howard livened up the morning by observing that Tony Abbott's knights and dames initiative was so quaintly olde world that not even he would have gone there.
  • (6) He knew that if he backed away from calling an election, he'd be accused of turning 'frit' - to use that quaint old Lincolnshire word of Margaret Thatcher's - in the face of the opinion polls and a resurgent Conservative party.
  • (7) Photograph: Alamy With no fewer than four beaches to choose from and a quaint town centre of ice-cream coloured houses and shops, Tenby is an appealing spot for a day at the seaside.
  • (8) At that time X----- itself was untouched by shot and shell, the old houses in the square with their quaint red-tiled roofs, irregular as peaks of a sierra, and their higgledy-piggledy doors and windows, were as yet intact.
  • (9) Port Gaverne , a little cove near Port Isaac always described as "quaint", is a good place to watch seals (and occasional basking sharks, dolphins and porpoises), go fishing or rummage in rock pools.
  • (10) Quaintly, his second album still riffs on the idea of tertiary education (his first was The College Dropout ).
  • (11) The problem with news is not a quaint moral cowardice.
  • (12) The only other person Drake ever wrote a song for was, bizarrely enough, Millie, of My Boy Lollipop, who recorded a reggae song of his called May Fair, one of those “quaint” pieces of observation – a rich lady getting in a chauffeured limousine while a tramp ambles past at the exact same moment.
  • (13) Gillard occupied the office she quaintly terms the gumnut room.
  • (14) "Nursing" as a verb, like adjudge, is one of football's more quaint usages that we should do more to encourage.
  • (15) The online world is sunlit and quaint, with a jolly host called Papa, who, when they enter, offers his guests a little girl.
  • (16) In Alain's work, the mixture of graceful, sometimes slightly quaint French, Congolese rhythm and Parisian street slang is very complex, but it is a complexity achieved by him as a writer.
  • (17) Quaint language and interesting historical associations are no justification for preserving obsolete statutes in a mummified state.
  • (18) This will leave the court divided four to four, paralyzed, in all probability, which is clearly nothing that perturbs these persons still quaintly referred to as lawmakers.
  • (19) Its quaint name makes you wonder if pupils practise deportment and learn the correct way to address younger sons of dukes.
  • (20) At the school gate, the other women looked somehow quaint.