What's the difference between dross and gross?

Dross


Definition:

  • (n.) The scum or refuse matter which is thrown off, or falls from, metals in smelting the ore, or in the process of melting; recrement.
  • (n.) Rust of metals.
  • (n.) Waste matter; any worthless matter separated from the better part; leavings; dregs; refuse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We put stuff in there that was not really that good, but fortunately there were a couple of gleaming things that everyone remembers while they've forgotten the dross."
  • (2) In this region, nutritional deficiencies--a special diet for pregnant women composed of sour pomegranite seeds, black pepper, and garlic; consumption of bread contaminated with silica fibre; and ingestion of opium and opium dross--combined with long-lasting and daily thermal irritation of the esophagus with very hot tea play an important role in the development of this disease.
  • (3) Trump, who presents himself as a modern Midas even when much of what he touches turns to dross, has studied the conventions of journalists and displays more genius at exploiting them to his advantage than anyone else I have ever known.
  • (4) I’m going to enjoy being at Mardi Gras and going on that red bus because I can’t walk the distance.” Gary Schliemann, another 78er, says there is a lot of dross in the Mardi Gras parade but a lot of good floats shine through, such as No Pride in Detention.
  • (5) Even better, the Darwinian fact that these 21 books had remained in print for four decades meant that we did not have to wade through any dross – all our survivors had some merit – and, thanks to the open nature of the competition, I had the perfect opportunity to read several "genre" books I would not otherwise have picked up in a thousand years: the briny Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, the aforementioned Bomber , which brilliantly describes the progress of an Allied air raid over 24 hours in the summer of 1943.
  • (6) Argentina 1-0 Switzerland (Di Maria 118) This game has been dross, but this goal is pure quality!
  • (7) Hopefully, sickened by the rancid, greedy human dross that runs and ruins our country, we will start to turn, respectfully, in our thousands to dogs, for a while, or even to the exclusion of anything else, because a dog is a flawless innocent.
  • (8) I'd rather have a career than a blazing penis of Freudian plant matter administered by a hack known for his dashing personal style, but thanks for the metaphor, Ross (aka "Dross").
  • (9) While that may be, as Palin suggests, because of "a couple of gleaming things that everyone remembers while they've forgotten the dross", it's also because they changed how comedy worked for ever.
  • (10) Fired up, as ever, with total enthusiasm for the next book, I immediately wrote UoW off as contemptible dross not worth bothering about.
  • (11) Yes, there were iconic shows from the US like Kojak and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but these were just well made entertainments at the very tippy-topmost peak of a mound of dross.
  • (12) Cromwell protested at such "dross and dung", but consented to wear a purple gown and sit on Edward the Confessor's throne in Westminster Hall.
  • (13) By 1933, Adams was writing in the New York Times of the way the American dream had been hijacked: "Throughout our history, the pure gold of this vision has been heavily alloyed with the dross of materialistic aims.
  • (14) Having built one or two gems among the dross is hardly exclusive to Derry.
  • (15) It seems probable that in Iran an initiating carcinogenic factor may be the custom of eating opium dross, which has been shown to be mutagenic, as well as consumption of contaminated bread with extraneous seeds containing a large quantity of silica fibres, which is a strong stimulant of growth.
  • (16) His fiction was a product of this process, an inner alchemy that turned the dross of senseless suffering into something beautiful and life-affirming.
  • (17) The variation in CdB levels was not associated with child's age, nutritional status, iron status, family per capita income, blood lead level, being a child of a lead worker, the habit of pica, and contamination of child's peridomiciliar environment by smelter dross.
  • (18) Funnily enough though, he failed to mention that the academy that he felt was a beacon shining in a world of dross was in fact created by the Labour party.
  • (19) Pyrolysed substances, opium dross in north-east Iran and tobacco pipe residues in the Transkei, displayed mutagenic activity in Salmonella typhimurium strains TA98 and TA100 in the presence of rat liver microsomes.
  • (20) 11am: "Now dubbed 'The Battle of Beglin's Ear', last night's game was typical ITV fare: 95% total dross, 5% passable entertainment," harrumphs Justin Spencer.

Gross


Definition:

  • (superl.) Great; large; bulky; fat; of huge size; excessively large.
  • (superl.) Coarse; rough; not fine or delicate.
  • (superl.) Not easily aroused or excited; not sensitive in perception or feeling; dull; witless.
  • (superl.) Expressing, Or originating in, animal or sensual appetites; hence, coarse, vulgar, low, obscene, or impure.
  • (superl.) Thick; dense; not attenuated; as, a gross medium.
  • (superl.) Great; palpable; serious; vagrant; shameful; as, a gross mistake; gross injustice; gross negligence.
  • (superl.) Whole; entire; total; without deduction; as, the gross sum, or gross amount, the gross weight; -- opposed to net.
  • (a.) The main body; the chief part, bulk, or mass.
  • (sing. & pl.) The number of twelve dozen; twelve times twelve; as, a gross of bottles; ten gross of pens.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Gross brain atrophy was slight and equal in both groups.
  • (2) Gross deformity, point tenderness and decrease in supination and pronation movements of the forearm were the best predictors of bony injury.
  • (3) Gross mortgage lending stood at £7.9bn in April compared with £8.7bn in March and a six-month average of £9.9bn.
  • (4) But that gross margin only includes the cost of paying drivers as a cost of revenue, classifying everything else, such as operations, R&D, and sales and marketing, as “operating expenses”.
  • (5) Initial analysis suggests that about one-fifth of gross costs would be directly returned to the public purse via income tax and national insurance payments.
  • (6) The concentration of potassium (K+) and sodium (Na+) was measured in breast cyst fluid (BCF) from 611 cysts greater than 3 ml aspirated in 520 women with gross cystic disease of the breast.
  • (7) They also questioned why George Osborne and the Treasury failed to realise there was a potential issue earlier in the calculation process – pointing to recent upwards revisions of post-1995 gross national income by the UK’s own statistics watchdog.
  • (8) A lost generation of 14 million out-of-work and disengaged young Europeans is costing member states a total of €153bn (£124bn) a year – 1.2% of the EU's gross domestic product – the largest study of the young unemployed has concluded.
  • (9) It's the roughly $2bn in revenue grossed by his blockbuster movies, some of which he had to be talked into making.
  • (10) Ender nails as well as three forms of interlocking nails, Brooker-Wills (B-W), Klenm-Schellman (K-S), and Grosse-Kempf (G-K), were implanted in cadaver femora.
  • (11) The loss of muscarinic and the sparing of benzodiazepine receptors occurs in the temporal cortex of histologically normal brains in the absence of significant atrophy and of gross dementia.
  • (12) Affected individuals were not clinically photosensitive, but their fibroblasts demonstrated gross cytopathic changes, low survival indices and an increased frequency of DNA single strand breaks following exposure to long-wave ultraviolet radiation (UVA).
  • (13) Fields said: "The assertions that Tom Cruise likened making a movie to being at war in Afghanistan is a gross distortion of the record... What Tom said, laughingly, was that sometimes, 'That's what it feels like.'"
  • (14) A tumor measuring 20 x 25 mm was recognized upon gross examination in the upper lobe of the right lung.
  • (15) No gross toxicological effects were noted in the experimental fish, although their weight gain was less than that of the controls.
  • (16) Currently, entitlement to CTC for families with one to three children is fully exhausted when gross household earnings reach about £26,000 and £40,000 a year respectively.
  • (17) There were no differences in the distribution of gross and histological types of cancer in the modes of recurrence.
  • (18) The pigeon's metapatagialis muscle consists of three slips, two twitch and one tonic, and these slips are distinguishable at the gross anatomical level.
  • (19) These findings were confirmed by examination of the experimental cases on the basis of the gross diameter of the warts.
  • (20) Gross examination suggested that TD was present in 80 per cent, 79 per cent and 27 per cent of tibiotarsi from birds on diets 1, 2 and 4, respectively.