What's the difference between gaudy and overwrought?

Gaudy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Ostentatiously fine; showy; gay, but tawdry or meretricious.
  • (superl.) Gay; merry; festal.
  • (n.) One of the large beads in the rosary at which the paternoster is recited.
  • (n.) A feast or festival; -- called also gaud-day and gaudy day.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The outcome is a belief that the Earth is being slowly strangled by a gaudy coat of impermeable plastic waste that collects in great floating islands in the world's oceans; clogs up canals and rivers; and is swallowed by animals, birds and sea creatures.
  • (2) Gaudy, Elizabeth T. (University of Illinois, Urbana), and R. S. Wolfe.
  • (3) Feeling peckish, I ride to the lake’s official and slightly gaudy Strandbad, which is free to get in and has several snack stalls.
  • (4) We have seen upsets and outbursts, sunshine and downpours, staggering exits and gaudy new arrivals.
  • (5) In the swimming pool below us, a throng of bikini-clad women and lads in Quiksilver board shorts are drinking gaudy cocktails and splashing about, having piggy-back pool fights.
  • (6) The march was later stopped a block away from Trump’s gaudy Fifth Avenue skyscraper where earlier in the day protester Margot Borske, 61, a nurse practitioner, told the Guardian: “We can continue to make our protest heard for every piece of legislation, every cabinet appointment, every amendment he tries to overturn [to] set this country back 50 years.
  • (7) Nestled away on an anonymous street behind Victoria station in London, opposite a Ladbrokes betting shop and overshadowed by the gaudy branding of a nearby restaurant called Loco Mexicano, is a little glass door crowned with the words Pret Academy.
  • (8) Gezi Park was completely cleared of the gaudy paraphernalia of pluralist protest that had been its hallmark.
  • (9) So he positively enjoyed draping what is, in fact, a chilling allegory of paternal possessiveness and pseudo-scientific fanaticism, in the gaudy fabric of a "romance", just as the author pretends, in his pseudo-preface, to have discovered it among the works of "M de l'Aubépine" (French for "haw-thorn").
  • (10) I smoked it on the plane all the way back to London, hiding the gaudy light show under a blanket.
  • (11) They gave the orders, booked flights and accommodation, picked up the heroin, even bought loose, gaudy tourist shirts to cover up the drugs.
  • (12) In the middle of Amsterdam, the activists painted a small number of used bikes white, and issued a pamphlet stating that “the white bike symbolises simplicity and hygiene as opposed to the gaudiness and filth of the authoritarian car”.
  • (13) And who can forget a few years back when the bright, gaudy, rhinestoned nail designs popular with minorities made the jump from chavvy to chic as soon as the masses cottoned on?
  • (14) While shaking NBA commissioner Adam Silver's hand, Wiggins flashed a grin so wide that it almost – almost – deflected attention away from his gaudy, florally-patterned suit.
  • (15) So I’ve always dismissed cruising – with its gaudy decor and ra-ra entertainment – as tacky and unimaginative at best, socially shameful and environmentally reprehensible at worst.
  • (16) The spectre of Blair has been hanging over proceedings like forgotten Christmas decorations after Twelfth Night, a gaudy reminder of times past, once enjoyable but now dragging on.
  • (17) But my father is very far from being a hero – I always say if someone reads my book and wants to be Pablo Escobar, then I did a bad job.” And while Narcos does have a certain Goodfellas -style glamour to its depiction of Escobar’s gaudy world, it is careful to present a fully rounded portrayal of the drugs trade.
  • (18) Shoppers might well look upon it as Catholics do Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, a design that adds fantasia to the architectural experience of their religion.
  • (19) But the reality is that, like the gaudy birds in the aviary on the shores of the Zugersee, he is unable to flutter very far.
  • (20) Yet Douglas points out that real stardom came relatively late, when he was nudging middle age, with the gaudy double-header of Fatal Attraction and Wall Street.

Overwrought


Definition:

  • () of Overwork
  • (p. p. & a.) Wrought upon excessively; overworked; overexcited.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) With the students back, parliament in session and that Killers album slowly being revealed as an overwrought dud, what better time for the greatest minds of their generation to go down the pub and invent a new genre?
  • (2) No one assumes that New Zealand will have an impact in South Africa, yet insouciance is an asset when other sides are so overwrought.
  • (3) Lost in all of the cyber-Armageddon rhetoric is Sony’s own negligent security practices, which is maybe where some of Hollywood’s own overwrought ire should be pointed, rather than blaming journalists for reporting.
  • (4) The season premiere, which aired on Sunday, has everything its returning fans demand: shocks and quips and china sauce-boats, and overwrought manners and hats.
  • (5) One morning we had a text vote for whether or not to play Curtain Call by the Damned, in its full 18 minutes of overwrought gothic glory.
  • (6) Overwrought tell-all memoirs are liable to elicit this response even from those who are not directly affected.
  • (7) One of the older ones actually burst into tears, somewhat overwrought by the whole experience.
  • (8) I, for one, enjoyed the overwrought silliness of series two.
  • (9) He is overwrought and half-asleep, and so Forster risks giving him purple cravings for "big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science can reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend".
  • (10) The 34-year-old was as overwrought as any testosterone-maddened youngster but could still have contrived a triumph.
  • (11) It’s as if too many overwrought, mainly male, pub bores have been allowed to take over what is, never forget, a vote for the whole country’s future.
  • (12) Should he ever need alternative employment - and, after all, he might - Brown might consider a career writing poems in overwrought Hallmark greetings cards.
  • (13) The understandable but overwrought attacks on Saif Gaddafi that followed his embrace of his father, clan and regime in Tripoli at the start of the uprising, have made it extremely difficult to pursue a diplomatic track in Libya.
  • (14) All of which she squares up to with Boudiccan fortitude (overwrought grandma years).
  • (15) There is a danger for Franzen, that an author who is not a native user of the internet will be exposed in the way in which he writes about it, and there are a few false notes in Purity; an off use of the term “going viral”, a tin-eared reference to Jeff Bezos, and the overwrought phrase “moused and clicked” to describe the activity of industrious interns at their desks.
  • (16) Whether overwrought or merely unlucky, Liverpool could not capitalise on initial ebullience and fell behind nine minutes from the interval.
  • (17) In a number of later films, he is often seen trying to direct some overwrought superstar.
  • (18) It certainly paved the way for two acclaimed debut albums in the trip-hop vein – Portishead's dense and sometimes overwrought Dummy (1994) and Tricky's darkly mesmeric Maxinquaye from 1995 – as well as the more well-mannered beats of acts such as Morcheeba and Zero 7.
  • (19) For me, it’s just indulging my passion for overwrought choreography, pure performance and cheesy music.
  • (20) I felt odd: overtired, overwrought, unpleasantly like my brain had been removed and my skull stuffed with something like microwaved aluminium foil, dinted, charred and shorting with sparks.