What's the difference between flippant and irreverent?

Flippant


Definition:

  • (a.) Of smooth, fluent, and rapid speech; speaking with ease and rapidity; having a voluble tongue; talkative.
  • (a.) Speaking fluently and confidently, without knowledge or consideration; empty; trifling; inconsiderate; pert; petulant.
  • (n.) A flippant person.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ohler’s book may well irritate some historians; he makes flippant remarks and uses chapter titles such as “Sieg High!” and “High Hitler”.
  • (2) From flippant offensive comments about women to serious allegations of assault from those he has encountered through his relationships and career, Trump stands accused of misogyny to a degree that has not been seen in mainstream American politics for decades.
  • (3) This week, after an article in the Mail on Sunday detailed the prejudices he had expressed, Fury made what he calls flippant threats in a video interview against the journalist, Oliver Holt.
  • (4) The Zappa statue was audaciously suggested by local artists in 1992, as a slightly flippant test of their country's newfound democratic freedoms; to their surprise, the authorities called their bluff.
  • (5) Lewis, often all too ready with a flippant remark, suggested that Countrywide's highly unpopular chief executive, Angelo Mozilo, could go away and "have some fun" with the proceeds.
  • (6) However, when the remark was repeated in another newspaper, he contact the author to say that he has no reason to think Cook was murdered and put the remark down to a "flippant comment".
  • (7) As the Queens Park Rangers manager's first taste of the play-offs was a forgettable, fractious affair, the Champions League and the Championship felt worlds apart, even if Redknapp, ever ready with a flippant one-liner, pretended to disagree.
  • (8) I was 13, watching the news with my parents, and flippantly said to my dad: "When they catch that monster they should string him up."
  • (9) Flippantly, I ask, isn't the pay so low it amounts to charitable work?
  • (10) It is, for instance, a lot of work; I don't mean that flippantly.
  • (11) This professionally flippant, slyly populist voice, accepting of kitsch and able to rework it into unintentional comedy, has become the default style not only of TV reviewers but also of viewers.
  • (12) I don’t just walk away when they say they’re going to die, to end their life … It’s not a flippant exchange, but it’s not in any way a doctor-patient involvement,” he said.
  • (13) Malala's courage and dignity come through strongly in a picture that is unexpectedly relaxed, almost flippant, given the circumstances.
  • (14) Hunt said today: "I made a flippant comment which I'm sure will be carved on my epitaph.
  • (15) Reading Kelsey Osgood’s memoir How To Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia , I came across yet another label, wannarexia, often used by eating disorder sufferers to disparagingly describe someone who actively and flippantly seeks out an eating disorder.
  • (16) Earlier he flippantly had thanked the BBC for his opportunity.
  • (17) Flippant remarks such as those you chose to use today only serve to reinforce the gap in understanding.
  • (18) He squirms into a shrug that indicates he's being both flippant and serious.
  • (19) Miami Beach--or "God's Waiting Room" as some have flippantly named it--has an overwhelming number of elderly people living on low incomes.
  • (20) The same year, in a flippant example of the use of the technology, an American billionaire reportedly paid a cloning expert $5m to recreate his favourite pet collie.

Irreverent


Definition:

  • (a.) Not reverent; showing a want of reverence; expressive of a want of veneration; as, an irreverent babbler; an irreverent jest.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This country has had a free press for the last 300 years, that has been irreverent and rude as my website is and holding public officials to account.
  • (2) Animal Practice is a Universal Television production based on an irreverent New York veterinarian, played by Justin Kirk of Weeds and Angels in America.
  • (3) There has been much pointing-and-chortling of late at the Daily Mail's embarrassing failure to stoke national outrage over a mildly irreverent comment about the Queen's sex life blurted out by Jack Whitehall on a festive panel show.
  • (4) One irreverent Australian columnist has suggested that the "Lizard of Oz" may now be more fitting, given that the Aboriginal meaning for Kadina, the country town north of Adelaide where Crosby grew up, is "Lizard Plain".
  • (5) He showed an irreverence for the lives of the great composers that sometimes came in for criticism.
  • (6) Ian Hislop, the long-serving editor, had a suitably topical and irreverent take on the vicissitudes of the magazine's circulation.
  • (7) The required skill of comedians-turned-presenters is to seem irreverent while rocking no boats.
  • (8) In our own time, Brooke has become the haunting symbol of a doomed generation, flitting across the pages of novels by Alan Hollinghurst and AS Byatt like a volatile and irreverent Peter Pan.
  • (9) Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman described Entwistle as "clever, erudite, a man, critically, who reads books, a man with a sense of humour and a great degree of irreverence, not least about the BBC.
  • (10) He could often be seen eating spicy lamb chops at his favourite curry houses, flattering local businessmen and speaking irreverently about parliamentary colleagues.
  • (11) He achieved a succession of scoops, and was largely responsible for training up a generation of gifted young journalists, notably the irreverent gossip columnist, Nigel Dempster ...
  • (12) But, unlike the supine press so common abroad, they still have the irreverent vigour and diversity of a true political safeguard.
  • (13) "I love that a country capable of extraordinary pomp and ceremony can still retain a spiky irreverence towards its establishment.
  • (14) Hall might be a scion of one of Britain's most important theatrical dynasties (his father is Peter, his half-sister Rebecca), but the cocky irreverence of his productions showed he had every intention of making his own mark.
  • (15) "The culture of protest needs to develop," one of the members of Pussy Riot said last month, and indeed as much as the band represent a form of protest in Russia, they also embody a shift in culture that echoes the DIY culture that flourished in the Seattle and Olympia areas of Washington in the early 90s – fanzines, garage punk bands, a tone of wild irreverence and a wish to question tradition.
  • (16) Jordan’s al-Hudoud, a bundle of irreverent online fun, recently ran a delightful story about the arrest of Father Christmas and the confiscation of presents he was distributing.
  • (17) Because they seemed to represent the best of journalistic virtues – courage, campaigning, toughness, compassion, humour, irreverence; a serious engagement with serious things; a sense of fairness; an eye for injustice; a passion for explaining; knowing how to achieve impact; a connection with readers.
  • (18) Many Muscovites were happy enough to see a tough response to the band's irreverent act of rebellion, which was aimed at President Vladimir Putin .
  • (19) I mean merely to josh, not to be blatantly irreverent, for who would seriously argue that Roth's career is not worthy of celebration?
  • (20) Catch-22 was an irreverent, savage and cruel satire.