What's the difference between enemy and foe?

Enemy


Definition:

  • (n.) One hostile to another; one who hates, and desires or attempts the injury of, another; a foe; an adversary; as, an enemy of or to a person; an enemy to truth, or to falsehood.
  • (a.) Hostile; inimical.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mendl's candy colours contrast sharply with the gothic garb of our hero's enemies and the greys of the prison uniforms – as well as scenes showing the hotel later, in the 1960s, its opulence lost beneath a drab communist refurb.
  • (2) However the imagery is more complex, because scholars believe it also relates to another cherished pre-Raphaelite Arthurian legend, Sir Degrevaunt who married his mortal enemy's daughter.
  • (3) That the BBC has probably not been as vulnerable since the 1980s is also true – not least because the enemies of impartiality are more powerful, and the BBC's competitors (maimed after a year's exposure of their own behaviour in the Leveson inquiry ) are keen to wreck it.
  • (4) To do so degrades the language of war and aids the terrorist enemy.
  • (5) An obsessional artist who was an enemy of all institutions, cinematic as well as social, and whose principal theme was intolerance, he invariably gets delivered to us today by institutions - most recently the National Film Theatre, which starts a Dreyer retrospective this month - that can't always be counted on to represent him in all his complexity.
  • (6) I’m perfectly aware of the import of your question, and what we have done, very firmly for all sorts of good reasons, since September 2013, is not comment on operational matters because every time we comment on operational matters we give information to our enemies,” he said.
  • (7) And according to Tory insiders, Shapps had lobbied hard for a more prominent role in the government, making some enemies within the party.
  • (8) Activists, who claim they are the enemies of patriarchy, dismiss allegations of sexual abuse as a CIA conspiracy.
  • (9) As extreme forms the two polarized radicals who now fanatically stylize the other as the enemy, will fight to the death their own denied opposite side psychodynamically.
  • (10) "I wanted to direct the first production [Ibsen's An Enemy of the People ] and then spend a year being the artistic director."
  • (11) Around the same time Kadyrov said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch who became an opponent of Putin and now resides in Switzerland after spending a decade in prison, was now his “personal enemy”.
  • (12) But while France has plainly moved on from the days when François Hollande could say his true enemy was “the world of finance”, major players remain wary of the country’s rigid employment laws .
  • (13) "Our common sense is often our worst enemy," said Marcus du Sautoy , the Oxford maths professor who will be appearing in the Barbican season.
  • (14) Rebels moved unchallenged along a road littered with evidence of the air campaign and the speed of their enemies' retreat.
  • (15) Al-Shamiri has been held as an enemy combatant without charge at Guantánamo since 2002.
  • (16) The insurgency is still raging, and the president will have to inspire the security forces, choose generals to lead the fight, and plot tactics to beat a tenacious and experienced enemy.
  • (17) The interview, broadcast Sunday, was taped not long after the president tweeted on Friday night that he considered the media “the enemy of the American people”.
  • (18) And yet for all his anti-establishment credentials, Mr Galloway is as practised as any of his New Labour enemies at squirming away from awkward questions.
  • (19) According to Kadyrov’s multiple outlandish, sometimes confused, statements the enemies aren’t just at the gates, but have entered the castle and are conspiring to take the country down.
  • (20) So new newspaper enemies turn against the BBC, thrashing around for someone to blame for the danger newspapers are in.

Foe


Definition:

  • (n.) One who entertains personal enmity, hatred, grudge, or malice, against another; an enemy.
  • (n.) An enemy in war; a hostile army.
  • (n.) One who opposes on principle; an opponent; an adversary; an ill-wisher; as, a foe to religion.
  • (v. t.) To treat as an enemy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mohammed Salama, 23, an Al Ahly ultra whose leg was broken in the stadium riot, said it became clear at half-time in the match between the two historical foes that trouble was brewing.
  • (2) Pandas have long been an important symbol of Chinese diplomatic overtures to both allies and former foes.
  • (3) In toxicological studies, the test compound FOE 3440 A, a [(3,5-dichloro-2-pyridyl)oxy]phenoxypropanoate with herbicidal properties, produced a severe increase in weight and an intensive induction of monoxygenases activity in the mouse, but not in the rat.
  • (4) For example, when Baghdad recently moved to revise an earlier version of an oil and gas law to the detriment of the Kurds, the Kurdistan regional government recalled Kurdish officials in Baghdad and, at the same time, invited Maliki's foe, Allawi, to Erbil for emergency talks.
  • (5) Instead, Trump targeted a familiar foe, the media, whom he characterized as responsible for spreading “fake news” about the ACA.
  • (6) As a previous Guardian piece said, the two organisations are foes ( Why ban Hizb ut-Tahrir?
  • (7) Add to that a dangerous nuclear deal with Iran (as Republicans and Israel’s government see it) and the apparent impotence in the face of Islamic State and the Afghanistan volte-face looks, to political foes at least , like clinching proof of serial failure by the commander-in-chief.
  • (8) Someone close to the trust told me in the autumn, "Both parties are bashing the BBC – it used to alternate – but the Tories may have done a bigger deal with [longstanding BBC foe Rupert] Murdoch than Labour did in the mid-90s.
  • (9) But in addition to providing clearer guidance to doctors, the change could have the effect of undermining several state laws, supported by abortion foes, that force clinicians to administer mifepristone according to the old regimen that the FDA approved in 2000.
  • (10) A puppet Government set up at Vichy which may at any moment be forced to become our foe; the whole western seaboard of Europe, from the North Cape to the Spanish frontier, in German hands; all the ports, all the airfields upon this immense front employed against us as potential springboards of invasion.
  • (11) In one way they were right to state the obvious – because Celtic were utter plod at the back – but hubris is best not displayed until you are beyond the reach of vengeance, as opposed to being about to walk into the fortress of the foe you have just mocked.
  • (12) A simple rocket immunoelectrophoresis method foe mu-CD screening is also shown.
  • (13) Syria • President Barack Obama is meeting Senator John McCain at the White House today hoping his foe in the 2008 presidential election will help sell the idea of a US military intervention in Syria .
  • (14) Isis’s violence is far from being nihilistic – a charge usually levelled by those who are wishfully blind to the attraction of their foes.
  • (15) It is useful foe evaluating the effect of antacids after stimulation of acid secretion with a test meal.
  • (16) Then Murray goes on the front foot, jabbing away a volley to make it 40-15, but Federer then wrong-foots his foe with a feathery forehand at the net to hold.
  • (17) But even as Turkey is increasingly drawn into the firing line of Syria’s civil war and the region-wide struggle against Sunni Muslim extremism, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s combative and choleric president, remains stubbornly fixated on a wholly different foe – the Kurds .
  • (18) Have they shamed intransigent foes into seeking a political solution?
  • (19) He concedes that there are several Russians who have annoyed Putin more but says “among foreigners” he’s probably the President’s biggest foe.
  • (20) But on Wednesday morning the eyes of the Russian elite – from ministers to Kremlin critics – will be on an unassuming courthouse in the centre of this city, where Alexey Navalny, Vladimir Putin's loudest foe, will go on trial charged with embezzlement.

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