What's the difference between dulcet and mellifluous?

Dulcet


Definition:

  • (a.) Sweet to the taste; luscious.
  • (a.) Sweet to the ear; melodious; harmonious.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They drifted in, to the smell of pork roasting and the dulcet tones of Billie Holiday.
  • (2) Of the 229 people detained as part of Operation Dulcet – the huge drive to bring lawbreakers to justice – 174 have been charged with offences including riotous assembly, affray, unlawful assembly, assault on police and criminal damage.
  • (3) Williams, 58, has reportedly learned to mimic Boyle's dulcet tones on a version of her audition song for the ITV talent show, I Dreamed a Dream.
  • (4) Think of writer and columnist Bryony Gordon’s revelations that her lover is so wrapped up in his job that he makes her have sex “to the dulcet tones of Jeremy Paxman berating an MP over the financial crisis”.
  • (5) Term for "female boss who doesn't always talk in the sweet dulcet tones of angels with the patience of a bank of saints": boss.
  • (6) Operation Dulcet is investigating rioting, hijacking of vehicles, attacks on politicians' offices, threats made against politicians, un-notified processions and social media-based offences.
  • (7) Preferable to a more sophisticated Zionist leadership that will throw sand in the eyes of the international community and talk in dulcet tones about a political agreement with the Palestinians, but will do all it can to prevent Palestinian independence.
  • (8) Still, it does give us the chance to hear the dulcet tones of Macy Gray again as she takes the reins midway through and carries the song to its heartfelt finale of – altogether now – "M.E.G.A, MegaUpload."

Mellifluous


Definition:

  • (a.) Flowing as with honey; smooth; flowing sweetly or smoothly; as, a mellifluous voice.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "I wish he were alive so that I could hear his mellifluous voice at the other end of the phone offering me congratulations in his courtly way."
  • (2) A blackbird is broadcasting its mellifluous song, a squirrel runs up a nearby tree and surprisingly, given that we are in central London, we can both hear a woodpecker knocking.
  • (3) Watson answered in a mellifluous computerised voice – think Stephen Hawking with extra zing – and in a neat visual trick its screen avatar changed colour depending on how sure it was about each answer.
  • (4) Gassman had started out, quite promisingly, as a sportsman in his hometown of Genoa, but quickly decided to put his athletic prowess, good looks and prodigiously mellifluous speaking voice to work in the theatre.
  • (5) He goes after its baffling, mellifluous names – Smintheus, Agyieus, Platanistius, Theoxenius – his pencil languidly scratches, in a whimsical mock-invocation of Apollo from 1975.
  • (6) On Renaissance, you'll find politics, war parables, mellifluous metaphors, a keen sense of humour and a brilliant backdrop of Tribe-ish beats by himself and the deceased J Dilla.
  • (7) It's momentarily confusing since Rob Brydon shares the same mellifluous Welsh sing-song as his most famous character, Uncle Bryn from Gavin and Stacey – a man with such a joyous enthusiasm for life that even reciting a shopping list he can sound like he's just discovered the secret of eternal life.
  • (8) Speaking from her Paris flat, 54 years on, Riva's voice is still as mellifluous and as gently mesmerising.
  • (9) They had no beer licence, but I got a cup of coffee and the owner told me in rich, mellifluous Irish how the place was normally teeming with Gaeilgeoirí (Irish speakers) but because it was a sunny day no one wanted to be skulking underground and so I was the only customer.
  • (10) The quartet then plays a private concert: a mellifluous account of the finale from Dvorák's American quartet, to which one boy dances as though to a pop song and another plays air violin.
  • (11) If anything, in fact, he's better looking than he used to be; he has an actor's mellifluous voice, and often used to be likened to Bill Nighy, but with shorter hair and a radiant complexion he looks more like a distinguished architect, say, or a classical conductor.
  • (12) That breakthrough arrived when Xavi found the centre-half with a corner-kick in the 73rd minute as Spain showed they need not impress solely with mellifluous passing.
  • (13) Recently, I tried the experiment of getting Google’s pedestrian directions pumped into my earphones (the mellifluous recorded woman’s voice interrupting Queens of the Stone Age’s mellifluous racket just before each intersection) in order to get me from a London Overground station to an unfamiliar pub 15 minutes’ walk away.
  • (14) It appears everywhere on gastropub menus ("proper pork pie", "proper mash"), in one-up-from-McDonald's burger joints ("proper hamburgers", promises the London chain Byron), and in the mellifluously matey warbling of Jamie Oliver munching a Vietnamese banh minh in an East End market ("That is a proper, proper sandwich"), and his own dish names: "Proper Bloke's Sausage Fusilli", "Roast of Incredible Game Birds with Proper Polenta".
  • (15) His late father, Chaim, born in Belfast, was a general who was Israel’s president from 1983 to 1993; his uncle, Abba Eban, its famously mellifluous foreign minister.