What's the difference between droll and whimsical?

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?

Whimsical


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of, or characterized by, whims; actuated by a whim; having peculiar notions; queer; strange; freakish.
  • (a.) Odd or fantastic in appearance; quaintly devised; fantastic.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Although he could be lovable, charming, whimsical, encouraging, and deeply devoted to his family, he subjugated the adult women in his household and at least one son to exploitation and abuse, demanding (and receiving from his wife and step-daughter) almost total abnegation of self.
  • (2) Photograph: Rachel King Doing a whimsical self-promotional piece for a weekend culture supplement We would never joke about doing a whimsical self-promotional piece for a weekend culture supplement.
  • (3) Here, it’s easy to make yourself comfortable in the sweet, slightly whimsical bedrooms that open onto a serene, tree-filled courtyard.
  • (4) There's still touches of the old, more whimsical comedian, though, not to mention a one-woman play about the Mitford sisters' love for sexy Nazis.
  • (5) The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies First up is the debut teaser for The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies, the final instalment in Peter Jackson's epic three-part adaptation of JRR Tolkien 's whimsical fantasy fable.
  • (6) But with the support of Tony Whitby, the controller of Radio 4, Bob Robinson played a significant and influential part in accelerating Today's transformation from a whimsical magazine into a news and current affairs programme.
  • (7) A great read, and a delightful puzzle, but as the contradictory and whimsical interpretations of the rabbis show, hardly a reliable basis for justifying real-world land grabs.
  • (8) Find out about the great films they’re showing ...” On Monday, as Fox and Leadsom painted a vision of UK trade slightly more lo-tech and whimsical than the chocolate biscuit mill in Bagpuss, Corbyn’s only media comment was a tweet: “@LabourFilmFest is coming to the North West for the 1st time.
  • (9) More whimsical stuff for county blog regulars here in the north-east, where Darren Pattinson has been the central figure of the morning session.
  • (10) Trundling on a cheesy tourist trail around the Italian capital (the Trevi fountain, the Spanish Steps), it tells four whimsical stories that never intersect, meaning that its most watchable stars – Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz, Roberto Benigni and Allen, appearing in one of his movies for the first time since Scoop, in 2006 – never interact.
  • (11) In between, he has offered whimsical, slightly vaudevillian comic sagas of sex and drugs in Notting Hill (then a bohemian enclave of high hippydom) with titles such as The Saga of Peaches Melba and the Hash Officer, and Hector the Dope-Sniffing Hound .
  • (12) This highly energetic picture isn't for everyone – but if you like your whimsical magical realism done up in an antic, extra-crafty style, this may just win your heart.
  • (13) It limits evaluation to mere tendencies, formulated in such vague terms as "complete remission," "partial remission," and "treatment failure," in a disease whose natural history is sometimes so whimsical that the same clinical case, over a period of years, can be both a success and a failure of the same treatment.
  • (14) He was himself an artist in his spare time, and his whimsical creations included a man with three penises (Portnoy's Triple Complaint) carved from a tree trunk.
  • (15) He converted whatever his feelings were into the whimsical, quasi-romantic banter that eventually made its way into the Alice books.
  • (16) I still have mine at home.” Ranieri’s simulated alarm call was no less whimsical to Italian ears three decades ago than it is to English ones today.
  • (17) This article presents a whimsical overview of how a father can participate in this most important relationship through supporting and assisting the mother and developing comforting skills for the infant.
  • (18) The north-south divide always brings out the whimsical Tolkien in southerners.
  • (19) He goes after its baffling, mellifluous names – Smintheus, Agyieus, Platanistius, Theoxenius – his pencil languidly scratches, in a whimsical mock-invocation of Apollo from 1975.
  • (20) Music has always been the principal inspiration for Morris's work, and the variety in this season is reflected at one extreme by A Wooden Tree, Morris's response to the whimsical fantasy of Scottish poet Ivor Cutler, and Socrates, his marvellously poetic dialogue with the austere music of Eric Satie's score.