What's the difference between gadfly and trickster?

Gadfly


Definition:

  • (n.) Any dipterous insect of the genus Oestrus, and allied genera of botflies.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Over successive failed presidential campaigns Ron Paul turned from laughable outsider to respected gadfly to the head of an enthusiastic grassroots conservative movement whose overwhelmingly young followers have a major impact on the Republican party.
  • (2) The erstwhile MP and professional gadfly has published a blogpost decrying "privilege checking", and longing to return to a species of "reality-based" feminism where everyone would stop bothering her about class, race and money.
  • (3) If you are being slightly less generous, you might agree with the verdict of an internal Tory document that called them "cranks, gadflies and extremists" .
  • (4) Twain's cult of personality – as lecturer and novelist, commentator and social critic, travel and humour writer, gadfly and avuncular curmudgeon – was carefully judged, his folksy humour natural, but strategically deployed.
  • (5) For the German media Samaras is the fly in the ointment, the gadfly who has put personal ambition before national interest.
  • (6) The prevalence of talent show products has contributed to this gadfly pop existence, even if they did produce acts with the staying power of Girls Aloud and Leona Lewis.
  • (7) This article traces Codman's career as an innovator and political gadfly at the Massachusetts General Hospital during the first three decades of this century, and examines the development and demise of his end-result system.
  • (8) Then Cruz was considered a conservative gadfly who would have to claw and fight rivals to be the favorite among even his Tea Party base but Cruz fended off rival after rival to win the Iowa caucuses and become the conservative standard-bearer in the field.
  • (9) Let's count some of the more vocal opponents – Oumar Mariko, Mali's perpetual gadfly; former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who argues that it would be better to wait for the lions to lie down with the lambs; Paris-based Camerounian novelist Calixthe Beyala, who argues that those Malians who would prefer not to live under a crude faux-Islamic vigilantism suffer from a plantation mentality; and some truly reprehensible protesters at the French embassy in London, who refuse to believe that most Malians are Muslims and don't need religious instruction from Salafists.
  • (10) The Buk, known to the US military as an SA-11 Gadfly, can reach targets up to altitudes of 46,000 feet.
  • (11) Ukip, a party once dismissed as being filled with " cranks and gadflies ", poses a real threat to the main parties at the forthcoming elections.
  • (12) I said it far less succinctly than Greene did, though, in a long, digressive blog post in which I echoed concerns raised by a piece that had recently run in the magazine n+1: that Gawker, once a useful gadfly that irritated the powerful, had become a bully more powerful than the institutions it mocked.
  • (13) They sound a bit like those American gadflies the Bravery, and that is not good at all.
  • (14) "We are big enough and ugly enough to put up with being called fruitcakes or loonies or gadflies.
  • (15) Dempster, whose gossip column appeared in the Daily Mail from 1971 to 2003, a remarkable innings, knew his core market: Middle England moralists who loved a lord, panted over a princess, doted on a duchess and became horny over an heiress - especially when any of these social gadflies flattered the readers' own lives by having disastrous affairs, getting divorced, taking drugs, fighting in nightclubs, going to jail, and generally provoking self-satisfied tut-tuts.
  • (16) From political unknown he has become the gadfly tormenting the big players in the EU.
  • (17) A giant picture of a fetus was displayed onstage for a few minutes and rightwing gadfly Frank Gaffney warned of the dangers of an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States.
  • (18) His remarks prompted an angry response from Mr Kilroy-Silk, the UKIP candidate in the east Midlands, who was infuriated by an internal Tory document which described UKIP members as "little Englanders", "cranks and political gadflies".

Trickster


Definition:

  • (n.) One who tricks; a deceiver; a tricker; a cheat.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonson’s trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist ; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals.
  • (2) Roberto says that more than one Premier League club has mad an offer to Ronaldinho, but the Brazilian trickster is more likely to move to the United States or Asia.
  • (3) In the central legend, a trickster character called Mr Clevver encourages Eusa to find and tear in two someone called "the Littl Shynin Man the Addom".
  • (4) If you want to see sleaze, just look in the mirror.” He also bridles slightly at the mention of the other phrase that is frequently applied to him – dirty trickster.
  • (5) The Ecuadorian trickster measured his pass to Wilfried Bony, who opened up his body to guide the ball unerringly into the far corner of the goal.
  • (6) In a city of hustlers, tricksters, and go-getters, where the right dose of swag and gumption gets you farther than a college degree can, Furo is a bumbling non-entity.
  • (7) Trump may say misogynist things, but other Republican candidates do them | Jessica Valenti Read more It’s true, like his fans have said , that the turds hurtling out of Trump’s mouth-hole aren’t created by committee and vetted by a campaign operative (though Nixonian dirty trickster Roger Simon says he tried ).
  • (8) It was alleged that Martin Van Buren dressed up in women’s clothes, that Abraham Lincoln fathered mulatto children – this is part and parcel of American politics.” But it would be hard not to conclude that “dirty trickster” is a fair label to pin on a man who firmed up his reputation for hardball tactics working on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns, had a hand in the prostitute-laden downfall of the former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and consulted for a number of controversial foreign clients, including the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos.
  • (9) Also the risk retirees may squander their retirement fund with the likelihood that they will be targeted by holiday companies or other luxury pursuits that are popular in early retirement years, or even confidence tricksters keen to grab some of the cash lump sum.
  • (10) The North's official Korean central news agency said in a 2,700-word English-language statement about the decision to execute Jang Song-thaek: – "Every sentence of the decision served as sledgehammer blow brought down by our angry service personnel and people on the head of Jang, an anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional element and despicable political careerist and trickster.'
  • (11) An initial internal police report released to the Kölner Stadt Anzeiger said that among an estimated 100 men questioned by police over their behaviour during the evening there were not only trickster pickpockets typical to the area – so-called ‘Äntanzer’ or ‘waltzers’ – who dance with their victims, unbalance them and use the opportunity to rob them, but also newly arrived refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • (12) AM: French President François Hollande is the mercurial trickster playing between the lines but not quite sure of his role or his aims.
  • (13) The defense portrayed Wildstein as a liar and a dirty trickster – “the Bernie Madoff of New Jersey politics” – and argued that Christie and his inner circle had thrown Kelly under the bus.
  • (14) A folktale analysis of these materials shows that they are most appropriately described as typical of the "trickster" figure in folkloric genre.
  • (15) The FSA and PwC collaborated and conspired to carry out a regulatory ‘hatchet job’ on Keydata and on me.” Victims of the Keydata collapse have branded Ford a heartless financial trickster, but he has always claimed he is as much a victim as the savers.
  • (16) The BFG shares a common core with Rooster, Rylance’s epoch-making trickster-troubadour-tout in Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, which also delved deep into ancient English myths and pagan archetypes.
  • (17) He has nearly 40 years experience as a security expert for US law enforcement agencies, having switched sides when he was eventually caught by the FBI after spending half his teenage years on the run as a confidence trickster, imposter, cheque forger and escape artist in the 1960s.
  • (18) The man who published his autobiography Songs My Mother Taught Me, in 1994, was already cynical to the point of nihilism, a tease and a trickster, yet always most mocking of himself.
  • (19) A science writer calling the theorists who are actually doing the research "confidence tricksters'' or Stephen Hawking "a fairytale physicist'' doesn't cut the mustard.
  • (20) If you've been infected by Cryptolocker, your files really are gone unless you have a backup Some ransomware is little more than a confidence trickster, presenting a message asking for payment without having done anything to the user's files.