What's the difference between encounter and skirmish?

Encounter


Definition:

  • (adv.) To come against face to face; to meet; to confront, either by chance, suddenly, or deliberately; especially, to meet in opposition or with hostile intent; to engage in conflict with; to oppose; to struggle with; as, to encounter a friend in traveling; two armies encounter each other; to encounter obstacles or difficulties, to encounter strong evidence of a truth.
  • (v. i.) To meet face to face; to have a meeting; to meet, esp. as enemies; to engage in combat; to fight; as, three armies encountered at Waterloo.
  • (v. t.) A meeting face to face; a running against; a sudden or incidental meeting; an interview.
  • (v. t.) A meeting, with hostile purpose; hence, a combat; a battle; as, a bloody encounter.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This selective review emphasizes advances in neurochemistry which provide a context for current and future research on neurological and psychiatric disorders encountered in clinical practice.
  • (2) These immunocytochemical studies clearly demonstrated that cells encountered within the fibrous intimal thickening in the vein graft were inevitably smooth muscle cell in origin.
  • (3) This exploratory survey of 100 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) was conducted (1) to learn about the types and frequencies of disability law-related problems encountered as a result of having RA, and (2) to assess the respective relationships between the number of disability law-related problems reported and the patients' sociodemographic and RA disease characteristics.
  • (4) The following case highlights the diagnostic and therapeutic dilemmas encountered in a middle-aged patient who presented with dementia and apathetic hyperthyroidism.
  • (5) The types, frequency, and clinical features of neoplasms encountered in the perinatal period are markedly different from those observed in older children and adolescents.
  • (6) An age- and education-matched group of women with no family history of FXS was asked to predict the seriousness of problems they might encounter were they to bear a child with a handicapping condition.
  • (7) The most commonly encountered organisms were aerobic bacteria (91%), anaerobes (74%), and fungi (48%).
  • (8) Intoxications arising from therapeutic activities pertaining to this cult are of the same kind as those encountered in the practice of Modern Medicine.
  • (9) The authors discuss the results of the diagnosis and treatment of abscesses of the right hepatic lobe which were consequent upon ischemic necrosis; they were encountered after cholecystectomy in 0.15% of cases.
  • (10) The labia minora as a pedicle graft avoids the problems encountered by conventional methods.
  • (11) Frequently, errors are encountered in the comparison of surgical versus clinical staging.
  • (12) But I recall my own first encounter with that ideology, back in the 1990s.
  • (13) Radiologists may encounter patients with fixed dental prostheses that may produce image distortion on MRI scans of the face and jaw.
  • (14) Orthopaedics is one of the clinical areas likely to encounter an increased proportion of such patients.
  • (15) Delirium on emergence from anesthesia was not encountered.
  • (16) Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the most frequently encountered bacterial pathogens in patients with chronic pulmonary infections, including cystic fibrosis and diffuse panbronchiolitis.
  • (17) Male patients were more cheerful during encounters with younger assistant nurses while female patients were more cheerful when interacting with older assistant nurses.
  • (18) As travelling is generally increasing, this disease might be encountered more frequently also in Europe.
  • (19) The major difficulty encountered with the current technique is the danger of neurologic injury during the passage and handling of conventional wires, especially in extensive procedures.
  • (20) An integrated approach to the surgical management of diffuse subaortic stenosis has been designed to provide adequate relief of left ventricular outflow tract obstruction whatever the anatomical features encountered at operation.

Skirmish


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To fight slightly or in small parties; to engage in a skirmish or skirmishes; to act as skirmishers.
  • (v. i.) A slight fight in war; a light or desultory combat between detachments from armies, or between detached and small bodies of troops.
  • (v. i.) A slight contest.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This we can see writ large in the prime minister’s skirmishes with Philip Hammond , the only member of government visibly considering the national interest.
  • (2) Manouras added: We will only know once the coroner has conducted an autopsy, but what I can say is that there were no police or skirmishes at the spot at which he died.
  • (3) But decades of struggle and skirmishes with neighbours have resulted in a tightly guarded border, and they were soon captured by men in uniform.
  • (4) On Wembley Way the party atmosphere had been briefly punctuated by a skirmish between rival fans.
  • (5) Benghazi's special forces, who declared support for Haftar, have skirmished with the militias he is targeting but the general himself has not yet been inside the city.
  • (6) But the confrontation quickly escalated into a series of skirmishes as the two sides played a deadly cat and mouse game in the centre of the city.
  • (7) On the face of it, this was little more than a skirmish in a town on Mali's north-east confines.
  • (8) For the UN negotiators in Qatar, this year's talks are just the skirmishes before the key date of 2015, when a new global agreement must be achieved.
  • (9) But Panorama's North Korea film, due to be broadcast on Monday, presents a challenge of a different order to the skirmish earlier last week about playing a song on the charts that could be taken as disrespectful to Lady Thatcher.
  • (10) No, I see it as being the right opportunity at the right time,” says a man desperate to break Wearside’s perennial relegation skirmishes.
  • (11) That interpretation was then corroborated by Labour MPs, who either hadn’t read the document or saw it as a handy weapon in skirmishes for control of the party’s election message.
  • (12) 4.08pm: Below the line, baerchen is upbeat : "Having watched England's superstar striker give the ball away umpty-nine times against Man City last night with some of the clumsiest touches seen since my brief skirmish with a girl from Hackenthorpe in 1971, they might as well give the job to Charles Chimp for all the difference it will make.
  • (13) It is the latest skirmish in the bitter infighting that has befallen Ukip since the election in which the party won 4 million votes but just one parliamentary seat.
  • (14) While the skirmish between Chris Christie and Paul over terrorism and its prevention via surveillance got a lot of media attention this week , it's more helpful to look at the general trend among potential candidates.
  • (15) Police fired volleys of tear gas canisters into a crowd of thousands - people in office clothes as well as youths in masks who had fought skirmishes throughout the day - scattering them into side streets and nearby hotels.
  • (16) When TV cameras start filming skirmishes in the crowd, Trump argues their focus on the protesters is evidence of liberal media bias.
  • (17) This rapidly escalating skirmish in American culture wars came after the Department of Justice sued North Carolina for a state law that forced people to only use public bathrooms that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificates.
  • (18) In Tripoli, fighters from the GNC’s militia force, Libya Dawn , have turned on each other in several nights of skirmishing, even as pro-Tobruk forces battle Libya Dawn for control of the coastal highway west of the city.
  • (19) Skirmishes have flared outside Iraqi’s second largest city over the last few days with an airstrike on one of its main bridges on Sunday.
  • (20) It's the first battle cry in the pair's hair-raising physical and mental skirmish and has become something approaching a catchphrase.