What's the difference between elephant and piffle?

Elephant


Definition:

  • (n.) A mammal of the order Proboscidia, of which two living species, Elephas Indicus and E. Africanus, and several fossil species, are known. They have a proboscis or trunk, and two large ivory tusks proceeding from the extremity of the upper jaw, and curving upwards. The molar teeth are large and have transverse folds. Elephants are the largest land animals now existing.
  • (n.) Ivory; the tusk of the elephant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The hymen was not penetrated as a result of intromission and therefore the site of ejaculation would have been in the urogenital canal of the 4 primigravid elephants.
  • (2) In June, a notorious elephant poacher led a gang of bandits in an attack on the Okapi wildlife reserve in DRC, killing seven people.
  • (3) Spending time with the baby elephants was very special; the best bit was watching them have a mud bath and occasionally joining in!
  • (4) Some of these are functions that would once have been taken on through squatting – and sometimes still are, as at Open House , a social centre recently and precariously opened in London's Elephant & Castle, an area torn apart by rampant gentrification, where estates are flogged off to developers with zero commitment to public housing and the aforementioned "shopping village" is located in a derelict estate.
  • (5) In December he smashed apart the Roman forces in the north, assisted by his awesome elephants, the tanks of classical warfare.
  • (6) Yang Feng Glan is accused of smuggling 706 elephant tusks worth £1.62m from Tanzania to the far east.
  • (7) Prince William is due to make a speech about conservation at an elephant sanctuary in China on 4 March.
  • (8) We haven’t ascertained how much of the forests it has taken over, but a significant portion may in reality be unpalatable weeds and effectively unusable from an elephant’s perspective.
  • (9) We’ve sent one of our writers to Kenya to meet the elephants, and some of the people who seek to look after them, just as news breaks that elephant numbers are dramatically down.
  • (10) It’s home to a quarter of a million people, about 150 elephants and a host of other wild animals ranging from bears and tigers to flycatchers and martens.
  • (11) Kenya's president has set fire to more than five tonnes of elephant ivory worth £10m to draw attention to poaching deaths.
  • (12) On the other hand the government and the police have got a duty to ensure that people in the Department of Defence are not breaching national security by giving stuff to you.” The Greens senator Scott Ludlam, who provided his own circumvention tips during the Senate debate on Tuesday, said Turnbull’s explanation indicated data retention could be a “$300m white elephant”.
  • (13) Through the year, a herd of elephants may move over a very large area in search of food and water – sometimes more than 1,000 square kilometres.
  • (14) At 5pm each night, local TV stations broadcast the locations of all elephants on the plateau.
  • (15) Sudanese poachers were responsible for the recent mass slaughter of 26 elephants at world heritage Dzanga-Ndoki national park in the CAR.
  • (16) We have a few quotations from a compendium of jokes of the first emperor Augustus (not all brilliant: "When a man was nervously giving him a petition and kept putting his hand out, then drawing it back, the emperor quipped, 'Hey, do you think you're giving a penny to an elephant?'").
  • (17) … the party wants to run a highly disciplined election campaign – there can be no place for a rogue elephant."
  • (18) In January, poachers shot down a helicopter in Tanzania and killed its British pilot during an operation to track down elephant killers while, in October last year, 14 elephants were poisoned by cyanide in Zimbabwe .
  • (19) It would be kind of a big elephant to have missed."
  • (20) A realistic elephant might serve as a memento to the hundred elephants killed for their ivory every day.

Piffle


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Is it hopelessly old fart-ish to hope exposure that to the horrors described by Buergenthal will remind all of us of the piffling nature of our next household conflagration about who gets to wear which pair of jeans, or whether homework on the weekend really constitutes a hardship – or even, somehow, temper the demand for new electronic equipment?
  • (2) If he can't do this here, then his global rhetoric will look thin indeed - and it's no use announcing some piffling sum and pretending it will do.
  • (3) Dan Nolan (@dannolan) PEFO more like piffle boom August 13, 2013 3.40am BST Bowen is asked whether the assumptions in PEFO are a reflection on the efficacy or otherwise of the PNG Solution.
  • (4) The bottom line for us is they were asking the taxpayers for $50m to buy new plant and equipment … so Coca-Cola Amatil could make a larger profit,” Hockey said, as he campaigned for next weekend’s by-election in the Brisbane seat of Griffith But Sharman Stone, the Coalition backbencher who represents the area, said the government is “scapegoating” SPC Ardmona and exaggerating “piffling” issues in the companies’ enterprise agreement to draw the struggling fruit manufacturer into a “union witch-hunt”.
  • (5) The government is “scapegoating” SPC Ardmona and exaggerating “piffling” issues in the companies’ enterprise agreement to draw the struggling fruit manufacturer into a “union witch-hunt”, the Coalition backbencher Sharman Stone has said.
  • (6) As a result, disabled people are losing more than any other group, not by some piffling, coincidental amount, but by a factor of three or four; by thousands of pounds a year.
  • (7) It’s true that claimants are sanctioned for piffling reasons .
  • (8) The targets aren't piffling, incidentally – they are significantly beyond "answering to your name".
  • (9) There was never any question of me being offered it, or of it being debated … It’s just, as they say, poppycock and piffle.” The tensions surrounding the reshuffle were illustrated in the early evening as a heated discussion appeared to break out in Corbyn’s office after the Labour leader outlined his thinking for the reshuffle to Benn.
  • (10) Eurosceptics are right to think that the terms secured are piffling, even if he gets everything on the table.
  • (11) But there is, at least, anecdotal evidence to suggest that the often perceptive mayor's notion is an "inverted pyramid of piffle".
  • (12) Over the past century they were used not only to "explain" this piffle about cornflakes but, more insidiously, to explain differences in achievement between black and white schoolchildren in the US.
  • (13) Cameron found himself on the back foot, defending his plans to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership in the face of Lawson's contemptuous assessment that he will secure only "piffling changes".
  • (14) The DfE’s guidelines on the use of exclamation marks for its spelling and grammar tests were “piffle” and “tortuous nonsense”, according to Blower.
  • (15) But Stone, the member for the seat of Murray which includes Shepparton, said the provisions were “piffling” and “add up at most to a few thousand dollars when the company has been losing millions at the plant because of the broader economic conditions and because of the government’s policies.” The “wet” allowance, she said, had only ever been paid to workers who provided their own protective “space suits” to be worn when using caustic soda to clean the plant.
  • (16) Sandler, a perennial Razzie "favourite", saw his film beat rivals such as Will and Jaden Smith sci-fi bomb After Earth , festive celluloid piffle A Madea Christmas and ensemble turkey Movie 43 , all of which scored six nominations.
  • (17) These sentiments are dismissed by Merivel's Quaker friend, Pearce, as "pagan, freakish piffle", but Merivel clings to them, orders an artist's smock and a floppy hat, canvases, pigments and brushes, and sets about his task with his characteristic over-enthusiasm, only to understand very quickly that his work has no value whatsoever.
  • (18) But he wrote a load of racist, reactionary, negative, neocon piffle."
  • (19) There was never any question of me being offered it, or of it being debated … It’s just, as they say, poppycock and piffle.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest “It’s poppycock and piffle”: Diane Abbott dismisses shadow foreign secretary rumour Lewis, a new MP who has served in the army in Afghanistan, said he would not be keen to take on a shadow cabinet role so quickly.
  • (20) Instead, I'm snacking on the scraps of joyous piffle like Alex Polizzi's The Fixer .