What's the difference between gaudy and showy?

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.

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.'