What's the difference between flashy and showy?

Flashy


Definition:

  • (a.) Dazzling for a moment; making a momentary show of brilliancy; transitorily bright.
  • (a.) Fiery; vehement; impetuous.
  • (a.) Showy; gay; gaudy; as, a flashy dress.
  • (a.) Without taste or spirit.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In fact, less flashy politicians such as Jacqui Smith and Hazel Blears were the ones who made it to the top.
  • (2) We stayed together for several more years, until I swapped her for a flashy Mazda coupe.
  • (3) Sarkozy is charismatic and bling-bling; all flashy watches, Aviator sunglasses and supermodel wife.
  • (4) In the swinging 1960s, Peck's sober style seemed a little out of place, though he appeared in a couple of flashy Hitchcockian thrillers, Mirage (1965) and Arabesque (1966), and adapted to the new Hollywood as best he could, looking rather bothered as the father of a demon in The Omen (1976).
  • (5) Target Field, a $545m limestone-encased jewel that opened in 2010, produced an All-Star cycle just eight batters in, with hitters showing off flashy neon-bright spikes and fielders wearing All-Star caps with special designs for the first time.
  • (6) She has a way of owning the room, but she's not flashy.
  • (7) Flashy university buildings: do they live up to the hype?
  • (8) "She is the opposite of the flashiness of Rich Ricci [the Barclays investment banker who topped the City pay league in 2011].
  • (9) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marco Rubio’s campaign launch video Rubio spoke on a conference call with donors before a flashy political rally set for Monday night in Miami, stage-managed for maximum exposure.
  • (10) There is a flashy new restaurant block, high-rise apartments, and department stores where you can buy Dior cosmetics, Siemens washing machines and blue and yellow polka-dot swimsuits.
  • (11) You would struggle to find a second lord of the Treasury who promised a flashy and opportunistic budget.
  • (12) Similarly, gay SNL star McKinnon’s Ghostbusters character is never explicitly outed, but a few lines hint at her sexuality, while director Feig gave a “grinning, silent nod” in an interview with the Daily Beast when asked if she was gay, prefacing it with the comment: “When you’re dealing with the studios ...” And even the flashy reboot of Tarzan was set to have a kiss between Christoph Waltz’s flamboyant villain and an unconscious buffed-up Alexander Skarsgård , but it was chopped after test audiences were said to be left perplexed by it.
  • (13) Yes, I like clothes and flashy things, but I know why I have all these clothes: football."
  • (14) Now you can taste it.” Then she vaped, luxuriantly, on a flashy chrome tube.
  • (15) They would not splurge money on vanity projects, on “free” schools, sports stadiums, high-speed railways, and flashy science and arts centres.
  • (16) No big blast this time around, just what amounts to a routine groundball for the flashy fielding Kozma at short.
  • (17) Since its arrival in 2003, the titles have relied on flashy hyper-violence, Michael Bay explosions and ludicrous plotlines.
  • (18) It isn’t the most flashy cultural manifestations of gentrification, the cereal cafes and the hipster baristas, who are the most influential actors in this process.
  • (19) As the inspectors are "now obsessed with making lessons 'fun' and 'interactive', through endless games and group work and the use of flashy technology", traditional teaching methods are penalised, even if they engage the pupils and get good results.
  • (20) As a result, no one in the team could be described as flashy: Stone, like most of the company's employees dresses in the uniform of new media – T-shirt, carefully messed-up hair and black-rimmed glasses.

Showy


Definition:

  • (a.) Making a show; attracting attention; presenting a marked appearance; ostentatious; gay; gaudy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Why on earth launch a showy new pound coin with so much fanfare, when the real news is supposed to be the UK's superb growth projections, absurdly generous new subsidies for childcare and a thoroughly welcome rise in the income tax threshold, courtesy of Nick Clegg?
  • (2) It is simply a question of following the steps carefully to produce a brilliantly showy pudding.
  • (3) Shilton springs a long way to his left to catch the ball – a slightly showy save but still a good one.
  • (4) Born in 1973 in Honiton, Devon, the future champion was "never showy, but quietly confident," according to her mother, Linda Davis.
  • (5) The result is a mash-up of 9 To 5, Strangers On A Train and The Hangover, and as usual, Bateman's dry wit is an oasis of calm in a movie full of showy comic turns from Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and others.
  • (6) Similar anticipation by Baines prevented Fellaini scoring a second after a pirouette with the ball in the Everton area, then when Rashford played Valencia in on the overlap with a showy disguised pass, the United player had to delay his cross because not a single red shirt was waiting in the box.
  • (7) The same instinct for the simple, the dramatic and the showy governs his approach to recasting school exams, of which his announcement last week on A-levels was the latest example.
  • (8) "He's very calm and reassuring and he's not showy," said a senior television news executive.
  • (9) "It's not because I'm being showy or precious," she said.
  • (10) There will be some showy changes to domestic law, which other EU members will disapprove of, but can tolerate.
  • (11) I’ll be honest – the whole thing has always just seemed a bit sparkly and showy to me.
  • (12) By her own admission this week May is not a “showy politician” who courts the media, gossips about colleagues over lunch or spends time in the watering holes of Westminster.
  • (13) The FA has been buying land next to schools and building pitches: enclosed timber-built, artificial-turfed pitches, paid for by money that might otherwise have ended up in some familiar dead end: unnecessarily showy mega-stadiums, executive salaries, another Bugatti in the garage.
  • (14) This might tell us more about the company Amis keeps than the views of the general population; especially if you tire of these showy contributions from someone who spends most of his time somewhere else.
  • (15) In a recent Guardian review, they were deemed "big bold showy headphones ... with lacklustre sound" while What Hi-Fi said they were a "one-trick trendy pony" with sound that lacked detail or articulation.
  • (16) Consumers are polarised between bargain prices for basic clothes and trading up for more showy clothes – this may change, and Primark’s foray into markets like the USA adds an element of future risk.” At Primark’s owner, ABF, profits before tax halved to £213m.
  • (17) Meticulously presented, though contrasts of textures and flavours sometimes go too far down the showy molecular route.
  • (18) It is not a showy cry, designed to elicit sympathy.
  • (19) It really breathes as it hobbles along, and yet it's never showy nor overly optimistic.
  • (20) Anthony Lane, writing in the New Yorker, laid his cards on the table: 'If you don't get this cut, if you think it's cheesy or showy or over the top, and if something inside you doesn't flare up and burn at the spectacle that Lean has conjured, then you might as well give up the movies.'