What's the difference between flimsy and tenuous?

Flimsy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Weak; feeble; limp; slight; vain; without strength or solidity; of loose and unsubstantial structure; without reason or plausibility; as, a flimsy argument, excuse, objection.
  • (n.) Thin or transfer paper.
  • (n.) A bank note.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The airline had secured its injunction on the admittedly flimsy grounds that Unite broke strict rules over reporting ballot results.
  • (2) Verdict Black Hawk Down tiptoes carefully around the facts when it deals with US troops, but its interpretation of history is flimsy, one-sided, and politically questionable.
  • (3) The system is flimsy, not fit for purpose in an emergency.
  • (4) Samsung has announced a new Galaxy Alpha smartphone with a metal body, signalling that it has recognised consumer disgruntlement with flimsy plastic phone parts.
  • (5) Around 200,000 still live in flimsy shelters on rubbish-strewn wastelands.
  • (6) He gives vivid accounts of the utter chaos of Gallipoli where he shelters under flimsy awnings in shallow holes in the ground, exhausted and starving.
  • (7) Mansour rejected the charges, calling them “a flimsy attempt at character assassination”.
  • (8) Indeed, as well as the rather flimsy link between game and film, there's also a distinct absence of the game's presence in any of the film's marketing.
  • (9) If the British government wants the best of its teachers to stick around and deliver this on home soil, it needs to provide good reasons for them to do so – and they need to be better reasons than flimsy, inconsequential pre-election workload surveys and 1% pay increases .
  • (10) Ironically it was Dylan, whom she met in New York years later, who introduced her to the peace movement which she took to instantly; it gave a focus for her dissent and brought fire to her otherwise flimsy folk songs.
  • (11) A spokesman for North Korea’s Association for Human Rights Studies said on Wednesday that Shin’s admissions “self-exposed” the flimsy foundations of efforts to censure Pyongyang for its rights record.
  • (12) Their criticism of Ms Spielman for lacking “passion” is a flimsy one based on the style of her response to questions, not the substance of her answers.
  • (13) His clothes were taken away and he was returned to the freezing cell wearing only a flimsy hospital gown.
  • (14) Yes, the passing was loose, the midfield was short of ingenuity and there were only fleeting glimpses of a team of genuine force but that should hardly constitute a surprise given the flimsy preparations.
  • (15) Everything underlying the conviction struck him as flimsy.
  • (16) He added: "Businessmen did not get where they are today by accepting such flimsy advice."
  • (17) It is a sad, sad state of affairs that a person can be killed for such a flimsy reason."
  • (18) Despite the fact that the science is often poorly understood, and that some experts say it is too flimsy to use in court, such evidence has succeeded in reducing defendants' sentences and in some cases clearing them of guilt altogether.
  • (19) Militias are reportedly already preying on displaced people whose flimsy huts dot the city, bright flashes of colour between bullet-pocked buildings.
  • (20) How dangerously flimsy would one's marriage have to be before it felt threatened by other couples signing a different piece of paper – or, indeed, by a same sex couple following you to the altar?

Tenuous


Definition:

  • (a.) Thin; slender; small; minute.
  • (a.) Rare; subtile; not dense; -- said of fluids.
  • (a.) Lacking substance, as a tenuous argument.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Diagnosis based on the character of the stridor alone is tenuous, and consideration of presentation other than the stridor is discussed in the management of these infants.
  • (2) Indian women are aware of our tenuous grip on our rights.
  • (3) Rising losses among the nearly 350,000-strong Afghan army and police, and a desertion rate of about 50,000 a year, also support Karzai's contention that control of large parts of the country remains tenuous.
  • (4) The results suggest that chronic sunlight exposure may be associated with an impediment to normal maturation of human dermal collagen resulting in tenuous amount of HHL.
  • (5) What the film does, though, is use these incidents to build an idiosyncratic but insightful picture of Lawrence, played indelibly by Peter O'Toole in his debut role: a complicated, egomaniacal and physically masochistic man, at once god-like and all too flawed, with a tenuous grip both on reality and on sanity.
  • (6) Because of disruption of the fasciocutaneous circulation, the perfusion of randomly based flaps is frequently tenuous.
  • (7) New employment data today suggested that hurricane Sandy is hurting already tenuous US job growth.
  • (8) Although extrapolation from animal studies may be tenuous, the present findings may explain the link between nutrition and the occurrence of alcoholic pancreatitis.
  • (9) If any of them is neglected or isolated from the rest, the whole will be impoverished-the student will suffocate in disconnected, empirical facts; fanciful theories will be spun from tenuous evidence; well established theory will be neglected by the practitioner; the best-intentioned schemes will have disastrous long-term consequences.
  • (10) However, circumstantial evidence is beginning to provide a tenuous link between smoking and the protease-antiprotease imbalance hypothesis.
  • (11) Though one possible mechanism for this reversal may include the inhibition of NAD-kinase by cAMP, there is evidence to suggest that such a direct cause-effect relationship is at present tenuous.
  • (12) We feel that tenuous attachments of the vitreous body to the fovea could exert traction on the vitreo-retinal interface or shrinkage of a fibrocellular membrane on the inner foveal surface could lead to the observations made by us.
  • (13) As has been long predicted by military critics of a bombing campaign, Mayville said Isis was already changing its tactics in response to the air strikes, particularly around Mt Sinjar, where on Saturday US warplanes attacked Isis positions surrounding the mountain where tens of thousands of Iraqi Yazidis have taken a tenuous refuge.
  • (14) In the years since the housing market bottomed out, Tremont and other pockets of Cleveland have witnessed a tenuous revitalisation thanks to newcomers seeking city lifestyles and new investment in 21st-century industry.
  • (15) Although the bright green light helped counteract sleepiness, any causal link with changes in melatonin output seem tenuous.
  • (16) America's arch enemy, Muammar Gaddafi, had thousands of troops camped in the remote desert of northern Chad, a forward front in his pan-African expansionist plan, but a thousand miles from Tripoli on tenuous supply lines and thus highly vulnerable.
  • (17) Data indicate that non-rehospitalization is associated with a stance of "positive withdrawal" (Corin 1990); it is characterized by a position at a distance from social roles and social relationships, combined with various strategies for keeping more tenuous links with the social environment.
  • (18) However, their entry into force was delayed for a "few days" according to a statement from Brussels, to leave time to assess the implementation of a tenuous ceasefire agreement in Ukraine negotiated last Friday.
  • (19) Although these results suggest a tenuous relationship between scrapie pathology and the integrity of neurotransmitter systems, it is possible that compensatory neurochemical changes in uncompromised neuronal populations may have masked potentially specific neurotransmitter effects.
  • (20) Mair’s links with far-right groups in the US and South Africa are well documented, but his associations with similar organisations closer to home appear more tenuous.