What's the difference between effrontery and overweening?

Effrontery


Definition:

  • (n.) Impudence or boldness in confronting or in transgressing the bounds of duty or decorum; insulting presumptuousness; shameless boldness; barefaced assurance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Anyway, he stood up there gripping the railing, and he was furious at the effrontery of this, and I guess he could already see that his plan was in danger.
  • (2) That corporations are people was not the great effrontery of the US supreme court's evisceration of democratic principle.
  • (3) Choking back tears of fury and laughter at the sheer effrontery of it all, Ronald Koeman will endeavour to keep a straight face while demanding £50m.
  • (4) Nobody had that effrontery to wear those kinds of outfits before."
  • (5) The effrontery of Cameron’s speech last Friday , opening public services to more privatising, suggests they are recklessly off the leash.
  • (6) No council leader would have had Livingstone’s shameless effrontery to suggest that those trying to stop the Heron Tower erupting on the skyline were the “heritage Taliban” .
  • (7) The other factor is that governments have become more vindictive in their pursuit of those who have had the effrontery to tell the truth about their activities.
  • (8) The sheer, sexist, chauvinistic, patronising effrontery of the man!
  • (9) He is not used to being confronted by people who have the power, the skill and the simple effrontery to challenge him – and to keep on challenging him.
  • (10) As the editor in question, I am not able to compete with Murdoch in fabrication – he has had a lifetime of experience – but I do happen to have retained my memory of the year editing the Times, made notes, kept documents and even had the effrontery to write a whole bestselling book about it in 1983, called Good Times, Bad Times.
  • (11) Facebook Twitter Pinterest London’s Heron Tower: ‘Ken Livingstone had the shameless effrontery to suggest that those trying to stop it erupting on the skyline were the heritage Taliban.’ Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian It was a destiny made manifest in his decisions on everything from aesthetics to congestion charging.
  • (12) It is hard to put it better than the man who, during the election, reacted to the endorsement of the Conservative anti-tax campaign by Sir Philip and other big business beasts by saying: "I have no time for billionaire tax dodgers who step off the plane from their tax havens into the country where they make their money and have the effrontery to tell us how to vote and how to run our tax policies.
  • (13) He was already working at the extremes of the domestic and the risqué; his placid mother and child carvings contrasting with the sheer effrontery of such works as Votes for Women, an explicit carving showing the act of intercourse, woman of course on top.
  • (14) The Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, said: "I have no time for billionaire tax dodgers who step off the plane from their tax havens into the country where they make their money and have the effrontery to tell us how to vote and how to run our tax policies.
  • (15) The story continues thus: Facebook Twitter Pinterest Share Share this post Facebook Twitter Pinterest close Updated at 4.29pm BST 4.20pm BST Probably little more than barefaced effrontery on Brazil's part, but here's more on that Thiago Silva story .
  • (16) Osborne's jaw-dropping effrontery often leaves opponents winded.
  • (17) Avant-garde aesthetics and feminist politics now combined to produce an art of fearless effrontery.
  • (18) What effrontery for health ministers to flourish a list of 53 organisations they claim support the bill, including all the royal colleges, the King's Fund and the entire panoply of the medical establishment – without asking their permission.
  • (19) After reading about 400 graduates applying for an internship, the effrontery of being expected to pay £4.50 for a watery beer in a badly decorated pub is enough to make you want to stay in.
  • (20) Perhaps his effrontery inspired Tettey in the 32nd minute, when Hoolahan's cross was headed out to him.

Overweening


Definition:

  • (a.) Unduly confident; arrogant; presumptuous; conceited.
  • (n.) Conceit; arrogance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Pakistan's recently elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, centre, will be taking on the country's overweening military not just Pervez Musharraf.
  • (2) Most are decades old – the overweening army, the confused place of Islam, the covert support for jihad, deep-rooted corruption, the poisoned bond with America.
  • (3) "No fundamental rights are worth the paper they are written upon unless they can be enforced, especially against overweening and corruptive authorities.
  • (4) This period is often evoked in the films in which he played an overweening ham in fifth-rate shows.
  • (5) The overweening Edinburgh Comedy Festival brand is officially defunct now, and this proliferation of venues, far beyond the so-called Big Four, is a merry jig on its grave.
  • (6) No stranger to accusations of overweening political influence or questionable tax affairs, the media mogul waded into the scandal over Google’s UK tax affairs by accusing the US tech giant of both.
  • (7) The Treasury has also attacked subsidies for renewable energy, which energy experts and green campaigners maintain would provide a lower-cost alternative to the overweening dependence on fossil fuel.
  • (8) The relationship between the museum and Manifesta has been difficult, not least because of its overweening internal bureaucracy.
  • (9) When a group of anti-war activists broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, on 8 March 1971 they hoped that they would be hitting the bureau’s overweening director, J Edgar Hoover, where it hurt most.
  • (10) We tend to think that were he alive now he would be excoriating those things we think of as Orwellian – CCTV, the communications data bill (AKA snooping bill) that would force email providers to keep records of who messages whom and when, all the choke-holds an overweening state puts on our collective throat.
  • (11) He is a Jew with no religion who has questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel; a naturalised American citizen who is a consistent critic of overweening US power; a person of the left who subscribes to no leftist ideology.
  • (12) We're looking at a situation far worse than the simple avoidance of basic rights such as pensions and paid holiday; it's a system in which poverty is actively enforced by overweening employers whose convenience comes at the price of their employees' dignity.
  • (13) A treason trial would mark the first time in Pakistan's history that a military ruler has been held accountable, and the decision was cheered by many who believe the country's overweening army needs to accept the primacy of elected politicians.
  • (14) They range from patriotic rhetoric, appeals to national sentiment and identity, claims of moral superiority, fear of the other, and the delegitimisation and dehumanisation of the “enemy” to real-time, mass-media communications, mass surveillance, and the overweening power, reach and legal force of a modern-day government.
  • (15) Click image for graphic Illustration: Paul Scruton and Finbarr Sheehy for the Guardian "Smoke and mirrors will not protect media plurality in the UK from the overweening influence of News Corporation," said a spokesman for an alliance of media groups including BT and the publishers of the Daily Mail and the Guardian.
  • (16) In the end, only business could furnish Johnson with the opportunity to build the overweening monuments his ego craved.
  • (17) All the essential elements are there: overweening ambition, a poisoning, a sink of corruption, treachery and blackmail.
  • (18) "Smoke and mirrors will not protect media plurality in the UK from the overweening influence of News Corporation," he said.
  • (19) We're all afraid of the gushing, overweening child inside us.
  • (20) The cathedral echoed with laughter, music, dance – and some sharp rebukes to overweening power: a fitting way to celebrate the 80th birthday of South Africa's spiritual conscience, archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu .