What's the difference between feast and fete?

Feast


Definition:

  • (n.) A festival; a holiday; a solemn, or more commonly, a joyous, anniversary.
  • (n.) A festive or joyous meal; a grand, ceremonious, or sumptuous entertainment, of which many guests partake; a banquet characterized by tempting variety and abundance of food.
  • (n.) That which is partaken of, or shared in, with delight; something highly agreeable; entertainment.
  • (n.) To eat sumptuously; to dine or sup on rich provisions, particularly in large companies, and on public festivals.
  • (n.) To be highly gratified or delighted.
  • (v. t.) To entertain with sumptuous provisions; to treat at the table bountifully; as, he was feasted by the king.
  • (v. t.) To delight; to gratify; as, to feast the soul.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Foggy feast Well done Carl Fogarty, the most successful world superbike racing champion ever, now known to a new generation as the winner of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here .
  • (2) If eating is solely about nourishment then the feast in which the vast majority of us will participate on 25 December is equally an outrage.
  • (3) Perhaps the number of complaints an ombudsman receives is a function of the number of ambulance-chasing claims companies that are able to feast on a 25% – 40% cut of the winnings.
  • (4) A spectacular fall from grace on the pitch – from first to seventh, playing dour football that is anathema to fans who feasted on success throughout the Ferguson era – will also lead to renewed scrutiny of the club's controversial US owners, the Glazer family , away from it.
  • (5) The movie excels in its many trading-floor sequences, great chaotic indoor crowd-scenes worthy of Raoul Walsh, in which we can glimpse the primal, quasi-animalistic governing urges that propel an unregulated – that's to say, totally lawless – free-market economy, as the hawks are granted licence to feast upon the sparrows.
  • (6) Later that day, over dinner in a private Catalan castle, I am sitting opposite Hollywood's Heather Graham and Jason Silva, her film-producer boyfriend, who have also flown in for the feast, watching as the star of Boogie Nights and The Hangover delicately transfers her food from her plate to her partner's.
  • (7) After saying his prayer, Sadaullah, was entering the room where the other guests had already taken their place for the evening feast when the missile hit.
  • (8) Another certifier, Mohamed El-Mouelhy, said the significance of the feast day was akin to that of Christmas for Christians.
  • (9) The Great Beauty is intentionally overwhelming; its feast of riches borderline nauseating.
  • (10) His offices released statements about meetings with cabinet ministers to discuss issues such as the availability of basic food items during Ramadan when Muslims feast on food after a day of dawn-to-dusk fasting.
  • (11) A six-piece band comprising of Win Butler, Will Butler, Régine Chassagne, Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara and Richard Reed Parry, as well as a moveable feast of other players, over the past nine years and two more albums – Neon Bible (2006) and The Suburbs (2010) – they have built a reputation for both the intrigue and intelligence of their songwriting, as well as for live shows that can seem ecstatic, desperate and electric all at once.
  • (12) The €31.5bn aid tranche has become "a bit of a moveable feast", Helena says.
  • (13) Graham Linehan , when we meet as the others grab sandwiches, is flustered from traffic but more so, I suspect, from, at the moment, being the ghost at the feast.
  • (14) A time when we remember a feast, the first Thanksgiving, on Plymouth plantation in the autumn of 1621.
  • (15) Let other 2014 commemorations of war dwell on reconciliation or shrink from triumphalism: next summer, visitors to Bannockburn's Live will enjoy a feast of martial entertainments, including, says Visit Scotland , "a spectacular re-enactment of this iconic battle close to the original site".
  • (16) "The text that is currently on the table contains 200 pages with a feast of alternatives and a forest of square brackets," he said.
  • (17) The wood-clad dining room serves four-course feasts and a decent children's menu (with free food for under-fours).
  • (18) During the last feast, Mustafa generously took the time to prepare over 30 plates of pastries for his fellow detainees.
  • (19) Three-course gourmet vegetarian feasts include local organic wines.
  • (20) It was somehow fitting that the day the US and Cuba announced the end of decades of hostilities was also the feast of San Lazaro, or St Lazarus – the biblical figure who rose from the dead.

Fete


Definition:

  • (n.) A feat.
  • (n. pl.) Feet.
  • (n.) A festival.
  • (v. t.) To feast; to honor with a festival.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The only thing Michael Fabricant could reasonably be vice-chairman of is the steering committee of Nurse Ratched 's ward fete.
  • (2) Gen Pinochet was also under indictment in three cases stemming from the 3,000 people killed and thousands tortured during his regime, when he was feted by Washington as a bulwark against communism.
  • (3) Bath-shaped recession If viewed huffily by his own peers, Sorrell is feted elsewhere, with invitations to the Obama inauguration and to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
  • (4) There, he has been feted by the king for making investments abroad to keep the kingdom fed.
  • (5) Biggs wasn't a cuddly heart of gold cockney character to be feted .
  • (6) Carney arrived at Threadneedle Street by tube shortly before 7am, ahead of most camera crews and photographers hoping to catch a glimpse of the governor feted as the rock star of central banking.
  • (7) But it may not have been coincidence that two months later, Farage was being feted by Murdoch’s the Times, which dubbed the controversial leader “Man of the Moment” .
  • (8) Bond doesn't expect WI sales at local fetes and markets to be affected as the biscuits and preserves "have been made in members' kitchens in limited quantities, as opposed to the WI Foods products that are produced by small-scale family manufacturers in larger quantities for the general public".
  • (9) Considered by many to be a giant in the intellectual world, Judt chronicled his illness in unsparing detail in public lectures and essays – giving an extraordinary account that won him almost as much respect as his voluminous historical and political work, for which he was feted on both sides of the Atlantic.
  • (10) And as for his much-feted reticence and unwillingness to be made into a 'personality' himself well, you'd have to say that was the icing on the cake.
  • (11) While here they were being feted, going to the match, invited to the House of Commons to meet the all-party football group, as well as a return to the scene of their triumph, Middlesbrough.
  • (12) In 1896, Bridget Driscoll was attending a summer fete in Crystal Palace, London, when a car travelling at a “tremendous pace” – somewhere under its top speed of eight miles per hour – struck and killed her.
  • (13) They are its flower arrangers and cleaners, its priests’ housekeepers and its soup kitchen operators, its fete organisers and its catechists .
  • (14) Two years ago Leahy had appeared to retire on a high when he was feted by outgoing chairman David Reid as "undoubtedly one of the leading businessmen of his generation … [who] has put in place a strategy which can secure the progress of Tesco for years go come."
  • (15) But by feting two cynical politicians who have sought to harness religious feelings for their own agendas, as Abbas is doing now with the furore over the Jerusalem mosques and Peres did nearly 40 years ago – when, as defence minister, he authorised the first settlements in the West Bank, in the hope the settlers would support him against his rival Yitzhak Rabin – the pope helped perpetuate the myth.
  • (16) Harris, for example, has been feted by Spotify, but also played Apple’s iTunes Festival in London this month.
  • (17) Sisi was feted when he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
  • (18) The first African American to run the Department of Justice was feted by the president as the “people’s lawyer”: a champion of voter rights, same-sex marriage, sentencing reform and civil liberties.
  • (19) Though he would go on to become feted by the fashion establishment, he never lost the anarchic approach of his youth.
  • (20) Oh, and by the way: While the Tories were celebrating the defeat of Ed Balls, I wonder how many of them reflected that the much-feted powers of the Bank of England to aim at sufficient growth to achieve the inflation target were the work of Brown and Balls, as was the curbing of Tony Blair’s wish to take the UK into the euro.