What's the difference between edifying and enlighten?

Edifying


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Edify
  • (a.) Instructing; improving; as, an edifying conversation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The fact that the BBC does the popular ratings-chasing things as well as the edifying things has always been a key part of the public service brief.
  • (2) Yesterday Andy Murray finally won Wimbledon and climbed into the players' box to celebrate; Saturday on Centre Court was less edifying.
  • (3) 8.49pm GMT The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza has written a profile of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that's sure to edify any serious Washington watcher.
  • (4) In the leader's office mistakes have been made, processes not followed, people excluded and details left unattended, and everyone will have their consequent un-Edifying moment, from bacon butties to posing with a copy of the Sun.
  • (5) Maybe it's guilt at our destruction of their habitats, the proliferation of internet-related animal cuteness or because there are parents keen to give their children something more edifying than Iron Man 3 .
  • (6) Mr Osborne's hero, a self-pitying, self-dramatising intellectual rebel who drives his wife away, takes a mistress and then drops her when his wife crawls back, will not be thought an edifying example of chivalry.
  • (7) The construction of clinical reality in German practice is distinctive and edifying for a cross-cultural understanding of medical systems of knowledge and praxis.
  • (8) The grisly spectacle of Muammar Gaddafi's death and posthumous career as Misrata's most popular body art exhibit may not have been very edifying, and news that the deposed dictator of Libya has been quietly buried at a secret desert location has to be welcome .
  • (9) In Nereis pelagica, graft of dorsal or ventral parts of a regenerate edified in the absence of nerve cord (=aneurogenic) on the ventral or dorsal face of a normal host demonstrates a completely dorsal nature of the body wall in these special regenerates.
  • (10) There’s Britishness and there’s Britishness, all of it authentic, much of it contradictory, not all of it edifying.
  • (11) Albania had entered the pitch to a predictable chorus of howls, whistles and things far less edifying – “Kill, kill the Albanian” and “Fuck, fuck Albania” were the soundtrack to the opening stages and a command-and-response routine of “Kosovo!” “Serbia!” between the east and west stands occupied much of the warm-up.
  • (12) But there is the less edifying explanation for why I'm here, which is that I looked at the list of past speakers, a remarkable list of the giants of global journalism – not just British hacks – with the series having been inaugurated by the legendary Ben Bradlee – and I could not resist being seen in their august company.
  • (13) Turkish history, however, is not littered with many edifying precedents.
  • (14) The opening scenes – the ones that made early news bulletins – were the least edifying.
  • (15) The vision of a prime minister, a future king and England's most recognised footballer prostrating themselves before Fifa's pseudo-papal state was never going to be edifying.
  • (16) The consequences of the three first-half pitch invasions that led to the match briefly being suspended will surely be less edifying.
  • (17) I agree with those who say that civil servants ought to be accountable if they make major blunders, but there has been nothing edifying about the way in which Ms May assigned culpability to officials before they had a chance to put their case.
  • (18) Frank admissions of loathing are always more edifying than PR guff for the credulous about brotherly love.
  • (19) It is certainly a less edifying view of the politicians involved, but it's a true view.
  • (20) The former chancellor told the Week in Westminster on BBC Radio 4: “The prime minister wouldn’t last 30 seconds if he lost the referendum and we’d be plunged into a Conservative leadership crisis which is never a very edifying sight.” The intervention by Clarke, whose frontbench career was revived by Cameron a year before the 2010 general election, will be seen by No 10 as particularly unhelpful.

Enlighten


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To supply with light; to illuminate; as, the sun enlightens the earth.
  • (v. t.) To make clear to the intellect or conscience; to shed the light of truth and knowledge upon; to furnish with increase of knowledge; to instruct; as, to enlighten the mind or understanding.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The Kalachakra Puja takes place in the eastern state of Bihar at the holy Bodhgaya site, where the Buddha gained enlightenment.
  • (2) As Justices Stewart and White famously said, "the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defence and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry – in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government".
  • (3) Society now takes a more enlightened, community-based approach for people like my daughter.
  • (4) The study was aimed at the enlightenment of intracortical spreading mechanisms in focal epileptic seizures produced by local application of Acetylcholine.
  • (5) Surjit S Bhalla, a Delhi-based consultant and former World Bank economist, said the British decision was "enlightened".
  • (6) With careful and enlightened use, pesticide toxicity, to both man and the environment, could be significantly reduced.
  • (7) Marginalised and wronged groups have been able to use online campaigns to usher us all forward into a more enlightened era in which we are more open-minded about the LGBQT community, disability, race, religion and so forth.
  • (8) These data provide further enlightenment regarding the mechanisms of the well-preserved functional capacity noted in these patients.
  • (9) We were enlightened by this therapeutic experience, so we attempted combination therapy using pepleomycin suppositories to supplement intra-cavitary irradiation, for the 11 selected patients who were suffering from uterine fluor.
  • (10) In the time of enlightenment more and more people thought, that very much cases of suicide were committed in severe illness.
  • (11) Possible causes have to be seen in long time of hospitalisation (average = 304 days), and apparent inadequate enlightenment of patients and in functionally and cosmetically insufficiencies.
  • (12) Our purpose is to enlighten the central position of competence in cognitive structures and coping systems of the patients.
  • (13) in 1991, French philosophy enjoyed a golden age akin to classical Greece or Enlightenment Germany.
  • (14) I haven't felt this enlightened since extraordinary rendition.
  • (15) People don’t have sex within only one borough – an example of why balkanisation is more expensive than collectivism The immediate anxiety was that elected officials are often not public health experts: you might get a very enlightened council, who understood the needs of the disenfranchised and prioritised them; or you might get a bunch of puffed-up moralists who spent their syphilis budget on a new aqua aerobics provision for the overweight.
  • (16) Daud Naji, an Enlighten Movement leader, said on Sunday that they had been told only that there was a “heightened risk” of attack and had subsequently cancelled nine of 10 planned routes.
  • (17) Beverage price increases were regarded to be the least effective approach by nurses and clerical employees, while physicians felt that the press was the least likely source of enlightenment.
  • (18) The first museums on history of nature were opened in early Enlightenment and had originated from baroque curio galleries at most of the European courts.
  • (19) But then the dislocations and traumas caused by industralisation and urbanisation accelerated the growth of ideologies of race and blood in even enlightened western Europe.
  • (20) Had English rulers taken a more enlightened view of gender issues they might not have got into such a mess.