What's the difference between fickle and fussy?

Fickle


Definition:

  • (a.) Not fixed or firm; liable to change; unstable; of a changeable mind; not firm in opinion or purpose; inconstant; capricious; as, Fortune's fickle wheel.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Light testing equipment is fickle by nature, making such units uncommon.
  • (2) Over the last five years in particular, the main parties' opinion poll ratings have been strikingly fickle.
  • (3) This was a risky proposition that depended on the good will of gentrifiers, who are famously fickle.
  • (4) Vinny's fame was quick, fickle and fizzled out a generation ago, hence leaving him quite literally sleeping in a skip, pickled by booze.
  • (5) It is also unthinking because it takes little account of the pending impact of the falling terms of trade and the sluggish domestic economy, which is being held back by chronic weakness in consumer sentiment and fickle business conditions.
  • (6) They were there to record everything from his despair at the fickleness of his recruits, to the distress of his wife Jools at the way the media had invaded their privacy, with scurrilous rumours of infidelity.
  • (7) Bowie wasn't a traditional pop star, happy to be known for one sound or idea then to be discarded by a fickle public.
  • (8) Washington has long been a fan of the petro-dollar and Obama is proving another fickle enthusiast, flirting with the industry one moment, even as he snaps at it the next – like the coquettish mistress of an oil tycoon.
  • (9) Could he build a winner to win over sometimes fickle Miami fans?
  • (10) Raquel Paiva, professor of communications at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said Brazil was a fickle nation that would probably soon forget this humiliation.
  • (11) The digital audience is more fickle: we have multiple subscriptions to magazines and newspapers; we leave a spray of comments on different websites.
  • (12) It is a strange and fickle beast, a flexible friend, dubious and duplicitous, as I was about to find out.
  • (13) How fickle the rest of the country is to forget its history at the expense of cheaper foreign imports.
  • (14) These moves are significant because the above list includes some strongly backed National candidates – especially Goold, who led the Headlong company, and Featherstone – but no recent appointee to another theatre could now express interest in Hytner's job without disqualifying themselves because of the appearance of fickleness.
  • (15) Bernard had become well aware of the fickle ways of Fleet Street and had become canny.
  • (16) At nearly 50, Ross will need to remain in the public eye lest the fickle world of TV starts to forget about him, but there are other ways of staying noticed in the digital era.
  • (17) The Scottish National party has repeatedly claimed that English and Welsh politicians would force Scotland to accept cuts or the loss of the Barnett formula if there was a no vote, accusing Westminster parties of being fickle.
  • (18) While the site is still sizeable it has lost users, business and momentum – extremely dangerous territory for anyone in the fickle internet business.
  • (19) Given the fickle and hypercritical nature of the group, in conceiving Spamalot Idle had to manage his expectations.
  • (20) She experienced something that transcended her pretty fickle and changeable musical allegiances.

Fussy


Definition:

  • (superl) Making a fuss; disposed to make an unnecessary ado about trifles; overnice; fidgety.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Infants in the third quartile were fussy at the commencement of the period and became gradually more placid from the fifth week of life.
  • (2) The results indicate that intra-uterine sounds calm 90 per cent of babies who are fussy or crying but have no evident effect on babies who are awake but merely alert or who are slightly drowsy.
  • (3) You can't grow bananas in Alaska or broccoli at the equator unless you're willing to expend a lot of money to create a very controlled environment, and even then, it's going to be fussy and painstaking.
  • (4) He is yet to find somewhere despite being described as not a particularly "fussy buyer".
  • (5) Individual differences in positive, negative, sociability, and soothability were related to the questionnaire scores of fussy-difficult and unadaptability.
  • (6) The distribution of spectral energy among four types of infant vocalizations was compared via computerized spectral analyses of "pain-induced," "fussy," and "hungry" cries and "cooing" of 30 2-6-month-old infants.
  • (7) I just don't like Michelin-starred restaurants that are too fussy.
  • (8) You couldn’t do that today without calling it grooming, which I suspect the author would see as a piece of fussy editorialising with no place in fiction.
  • (9) "The display of works of art, for example, is to be fussy about what colour pictures are hung on - at what height they're hung.
  • (10) Overall 27% of children had febrile (greater than 38 degrees C) reactions, 62% became fussy and 79% had a local reaction.
  • (11) "Dyson Cinetic cyclones are so efficient at separating microscopic particles that everything gets thrust into the bin, and you can forget about fussy filters.” Ten years' of vacuuming According to Dyson’s testing, its new line of Cinetic cleaners can perform ten years’ worth of vacuum cleaning without needing to replace or wash their filters, which equates to sucking up two tonnes of dust.
  • (12) I inform them that I will be turning up with a set of index cards on which I have jotted down key points, but will not be boring my audience to tears with fiddly slides consisting of flying text, fussy fonts or photo montages.
  • (13) Parents were advised to seek prompt attention if symptoms of earache, fussiness, or fever recurred at any time during the 30-day study period.
  • (14) Analyses showed that female infants who were unable to complete the habituation task were reported as being more fussy and unadaptable.
  • (15) One famous product was Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup , a morphine and alcohol concoction that was marketed to parents of fussy children as a “perfectly harmless and pleasant” way to produce a “natural quiet sleep, by relieving the child from pain”.
  • (16) The remark catches his combination of asceticism and elegance: an American journalist once described him as "a haute-couture Gandalf", a wizard who is a little too fussy about his wardrobe.
  • (17) Visual inspection indicated that "pain-induced" cries could be differentiated from "fussy" and "hungry" cries and that "cooing" could be differentiated from all cries on the bases of (1) the relative amplitude levels of the high-frequency components; (2) the average fundamental frequency; and (3) the overall spectral energy levels.
  • (18) NOFT infants were found to be more fussy, demanding, and unsociable.
  • (19) It is concluded that prophylactic acetaminophen as given in this study had a moderating effect on fever, pain, and fussiness after diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and pertussis immunization.
  • (20) In the latter, he played Martin Bryce, a fussy busybody unusually preoccupied with law and order.