What's the difference between fillip and foible?

Fillip


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To strike with the nail of the finger, first placed against the ball of the thumb, and forced from that position with a sudden spring; to snap with the finger.
  • (v. t.) To snap; to project quickly.
  • (n.) A jerk of the finger forced suddenly from the thumb; a smart blow.
  • (n.) Something serving to rouse or excite.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) So a striker needs also a bit of luck and then the confidence is higher but he’s self-confident so I expect he shall score and maybe against Chelsea .” So far Van Persie has remained injury free, which is a fillip after previously admitting to managing persistent issues for years.
  • (2) Coverage of men's lifestyle and issues in the media received a fillip this year with the launch of Men's Hour on BBC Radio 5 Live.
  • (3) Smith’s campaign received a fillip on Wednesday when he was endorsed by the GMB union after he won a ballot of its members, 60% to 40%.
  • (4) But for Xi the willingness of the UK to embrace China is a much-needed fillip as he struggles with an economy suffering from massive overcapacity, especially in the steel, coal and building sectors, where official data suggests factories have the ability to produce up to 30% more than current demand.
  • (5) It is now the official opposition, boosted by the star quality of the Tory leader Ruth Davidson and Scotland has given the once loathed party of Margaret Thatcher its biggest fillip since the 1950s.
  • (6) George Osborne loosed his most strident rhetoric yet against environmental regulation in his autumn statement , slamming green policies as a "burden" and a "ridiculous cost" to British businesses, in a fillip to the right wing of his party.
  • (7) Nevertheless, the figures will come as a fillip to European leaders after a turbulent spring when the eurozone was threatened with collapse as the single currency was hammered on the financial markets and rioters took to the streets of Athens to protest at austerity measures.
  • (8) Be in no doubt: the leavers’ recruitment of Gove, a man of intellect and integrity, is a fillip to their cause.
  • (9) Engineering firm Rolls-Royce has given Britain's industrial sector a much-needed fillip by announcing it will open four new factories in the UK, creating or saving 800 jobs.
  • (10) The figures, published in the journal Nature Climate Change , will provide a fillip to negotiators from 195 countries entering a second week of climate talks in Paris on Monday.
  • (11) A total of 40.3 million people watched in the US, providing a fillip for producers struggling to halt a slow but steady decline in viewers since 57.25 million tuned in to watch Titanic win 11 gongs in 1998 .
  • (12) Stock markets remain near record highs and the pound has been given a fillip by news of the election , with investors predicting the result will strengthen May’s position in Brexit negotiations with her EU counterparts.
  • (13) Yet the meaning is unclear, a fillip of animal optimism after a book-length, clear-eyed exaltation of Nature as a chemical and molecular and mathematical construct - Nature seized in the tightening grip of science, and stripped of the pathetic fallacy even in the sophisticated form in which Emerson's Neoplatonism couched it.
  • (14) Whatever this move represents, it has nothing to do with capitalism: it's all about trading years-long monopoly contracts for a short-term fillip to the Treasury, with the hope that while extracting a profit, our roads' new owners will somehow improve and expand them (they might, but surely on terms akin to the eyewatering arrangements of PFI deals).
  • (15) Kasdan's appointment should prove a fillip for fans of the original Star Wars trilogy, as he co-wrote the screenplay for 1980's The Empire Strikes Back , widely seen as the best film in the long-running space opera, as well as 1983's Return of the Jedi (not to mention debut Indiana Jones instalment Raiders of the Lost Ark ).
  • (16) Facebook Twitter Pinterest "But in business terms, I feel that it will be a fillip for this area and the north more widely.
  • (17) "It has been waiting for this fillip to its vibrance for some years now."
  • (18) The project was delayed when Blake's marriage broke down and he returned to London, but received a fillip in October 1986, when he and Mitchell made a trip to Laugharne, the Carmarthenshire town where Thomas lived during his final four years, and which is generally regarded as the inspiration for Under Milk Wood .
  • (19) The model of taking one person in a room and beating up on them doesn’t work with 535.” Friday’s failure was a fillip for the anti-Trump “resistance” but it was hardly grounds for complacency.
  • (20) This is a massive, massive fillip," said the OPLC chair Baroness Ford.

Foible


Definition:

  • (a.) Weak; feeble.
  • (n.) A moral weakness; a failing; a weak point; a frailty.
  • (n.) The half of a sword blade or foil blade nearest the point; -- opposed to forte.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Many of the patients anthropomorphise the seal, enjoy pretending that it is a real, living creature, with all the associated foibles.
  • (2) This week's edition of the FT's How to Spend It, suggests some Christmas foibles – £625 gloves, £705 Black Amber perfume, a £10,000 Boodles bangle.
  • (3) We're given a vivid description, details and foibles, before the town is populated with a cast of characters to rival any soap opera.
  • (4) If the mot juste was always a priority – "I suppose we all have our foibles.
  • (5) The sharp-witted late-night TV star, who regularly skewers the foibles of other celebrities, found himself on the end of the same treatment after being at the centre of a bizarre blackmail plot over the sexual affairs he had with younger female staff members.
  • (6) Children and their services have been prey to causes célèbres, fashion and the exaggerated fads and foibles of the media and politicians; they have thrived best when society and their carers were tolerant, and loving, sought good qualities to augment, not evil to exorcise, and succeeded in balancing structure and control with flexibility and freedom to grow.
  • (7) While cables exposing the foibles of Pakistan's civilian leaders triggered a media feeding frenzy, the press largely ignored revelations that cast the powerful military in a bad light, including its alleged support for Islamist extremist groups such as the Taliban.
  • (8) This is not about the exposure of one man's alleged foibles.
  • (9) We tend not to pin that badge on Ukip because of a paradoxical foible of Britishness that makes imagined immunity from aggressive identity politics a point of national pride.
  • (10) I'm afraid I didn't enjoy either Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds – they were too self-reverential for my taste – but, as a writer, nobody in the world has a better ear for the foibles and vulnerabilities of his bad guys than Tarantino.
  • (11) Gray was as funny and vicious about his own haplessness as he was about the foibles of others.
  • (12) WS: That Bafta routine of yours in the show was the crux for me – a perfect exemplar of your character’s foibles, because the ambiguity is absolute: Does he care about not winning one or not?
  • (13) By contrast, this collection – which will be available online immediately and in shops in July – celebrated British foibles and eccentricities, in the animal-motif knitwear and eclectic mix of town and country fabrics.
  • (14) The well done steak is not simply a personal foible, like preferring pepperoni pizza to a margarita.
  • (15) And, for all his foibles, Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter is a man you'd follow, too.
  • (16) This essay on the last years of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life exhibits all of Sebald's strengths as a writer – and all of his strange, gnomic, secretive foibles.
  • (17) For example, I've never heard him acknowledge that, in joking about Georgina Sachs's sexual foibles and menstrual cycle , he was demeaning to her.
  • (18) Over the years, scrutiny of Westminster has gradually come to rest on personal foibles, grudges and coups both real and imaginary - a kind of higher office-politics.
  • (19) The emphasis was always on the comedy, the foibles and peccadilloes of the characters, a gentle cynicism about the ways of the world, a joy in puns, a love of irritating footnotes, a relish for the bathetic puncturing of the bombastic – and above all an irrepressible and infectious silliness.
  • (20) None of us is free of foibles and peculiarities that the patient notices sooner or later.

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