What's the difference between execration and imprecation?

Execration


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of cursing; a curse dictated by violent feelings of hatred; imprecation; utter detestation expressed.
  • (n.) That which is execrated; a detested thing.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) All the statistics released about the Work Programme show execrable results, and yet we've heard nothing about penalties, or remaking the contracts, or rethinking the system.
  • (2) A critical review of epidemiological and experimental data from the literature has been made in an attempt to present an objective picture of this controversial and sensitive question and to encourage further research, which may ultimately determine whether arsenic deserves its execrable reputation.
  • (3) LP: My only experience of this was - and this might end up selling a lot of videos of a film that no one's ever seen - I produced a really execrable film in the mid-70s called Lisztomania, and I hope that no one here's seen it.
  • (4) Unrecorded in the YouGov poll are people who dislike all-women shortlists but dislike yet more the reason for their continued existence: the very culture that just created the execrable, the relentlessly mocked Woman Who Made up Her Mind .
  • (5) Its performance over the scandal of Winterbourne View was execrable, and this seemed to speak of much wider and more fundamental problems in its approach, resourcing and leadership.
  • (6) For the dark knight, readers will recall with horror George Clooney's bemused and Bat-nippled turn in the execrable Batman and Robin in 1997.
  • (7) The narrator, Nancy Hawkins, is a woman editor in a publishing house in the 1950s; her sworn enemy the execrable, self-congratulatory writer Hector Bartlett, to whom she refers to as the pisseur de copie.
  • (8) They included "the massacre of people solely for reasons of their religious adherence"; "the execrable practice[s] of decapitation, crucifixion and hanging of corpses in public places"; "the choice imposed on Christians and Yazidis between conversion to Islam, payment of a tax (jizya) and exodus"; "the forced expulsion of tens of thousands of people, including children, old people, pregnant women and the sick"; "the abduction of women and girls belonging to the Yazidi and Christian communities as war booty (sabaya)", and "the imposition of the barbaric practice of infibulation".
  • (9) PII certificates, he said, had previously been greeted by "howls of execration".
  • (10) Those movies include turkeys such as Jack and Jill and the execrable That's My Boy , though the rather better-performing Grown Ups 2 does not feature for statistical purposes because it falls outside the time period being factored in by Forbes.
  • (11) Lucas, the ultimate fanboy, has been the biggest culprit with his execrable prequels.
  • (12) I can already hear the howls of execration: now you're claiming that this cooling is the result of warming!
  • (13) His sweeping pronouncements never fail to set the leaves aflutter in the groves of academe, and his name surely is execrated in cultural studies departments from sea to shining sea across America.
  • (14) I’d like to be there, watching, when the old family films are played, and I’d like to impose my execrable musical taste on my friends and watch their faces as they suffer it.
  • (15) Ford, who is currently promoting his role in the sci-fi movie Ender's Game , is also taking a role in the latest film in Sylvester Stallone's execrable Expendables series .

Imprecation


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of imprecating, or invoking evil upon any one; a prayer that a curse or calamity may fall on any one; a curse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Because the governments are relatively powerless to affect US policy toward them, they turn their energies to repressing and keeping down their own populations, with results in resentment, anger and helpless imprecations that do nothing to open up societies where secular ideas about human history and development have been overtaken by failure and frustration, as well as by an Islamism built out of rote learning and the obliteration of what are perceived to be other, competitive forms of secular knowledge.
  • (2) Mr Clegg could declare without irony that the Lib Dems belong in power, and at last lay to rest the lingering echo of David Steel's hubristic imprecation to go home and prepare for power.
  • (3) It begins in bravura style with sirens and a clap of thunder, and then – judging by the excerpts we hear – is thrillingly noisy and aggressive, indeed a return to the familiar Wu landscape of sinister soul samples, whiplash drums, and dire threats and imprecations, updated with the occasional reference to Harry Potter.
  • (4) As in the case of China, one does not have to regard Putin’s moves and motives favorably to understand the logic behind them, nor to grasp the importance of understanding that logic instead of issuing imprecations against it.
  • (5) EU gives Poland two months to scrap changes to its highest court Read more So far, Kaczyński has concluded he can ignore imprecations from Brussels or half-hearted protests from members with their minds on other matters.
  • (6) Of course they and my brother Don, despite my stuttered imprecations, drove through the night from Edinburgh.