What's the difference between genial and genteel?

Genial


Definition:

  • (a.) Same as Genian.
  • (a.) Contributing to, or concerned in, propagation or production; generative; procreative; productive.
  • (a.) Contributing to, and sympathizing with, the enjoyment of life; sympathetically cheerful and cheering; jovial and inspiring joy or happiness; exciting pleasure and sympathy; enlivening; kindly; as, she was of a cheerful and genial disposition.
  • (a.) Belonging to one's genius or natural character; native; natural; inborn.
  • (a.) Denoting or marked with genius; belonging to the higher nature.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) What's more, his genial stiffness and shy self-awareness give him a kind of awkward dignity compared to the preening smugness of Cruz.
  • (2) Statues portray him riding a horse in triumph or genially waving to the tour groups waiting to see his museum.
  • (3) (A little later, I watch director Foley ask a genially menacing professor Capaldi to lift, and lift, and lift, the needle from a record in, I think it was, 12 different ways, to get it just so; I think "stickler" is fair.)
  • (4) He has generally been appreciated by journalists for his accessibility and geniality – and, as Guardian readers and Thought for the Day listeners to Radio 4's Today programme know, his ability to present a coherent and challenging message cogently and to deadlines.
  • (5) Sentencing him at Preston crown court, Anthony Russell QC said Hall was known to the public for his genial personality but had a darker side.
  • (6) Review of all available information indicates that conservative management is the treatment of choice for fractures of genial tubercles.
  • (7) It’s called the Green party, so let’s not sink together, let’s sail together!” Johnson, the genial former Republican governor of a Democratic state, New Mexico, was popular in office, lowering state taxes, expanding jobs and attracting more businesses.
  • (8) Thomson swiftly raised the stakes with more investment and commercial drive; but David welcomed the arrival of this genial newcomer with pebble glasses who was prepared to give his editors independence: and he was furious when the paper published a critical profile of Thomson while he was on holiday.
  • (9) The nearest he had got to show business was appearing, with the encouragement of his genial Uncle Lew, at the Rex Cinema, Haslemere , Surrey, for a Sunday afternoon talent concert.
  • (10) Wasn’t it unbecoming of the man dubbed the new Terrence Malick to direct scenes with genial tokers discussing pioneering methods of joint construction , or hookah-puffing sex-pest wizards ?
  • (11) Herpes simplex virus was isolated from 30 of 57 patients clinically diagnosed as suffering from a herpetic or herpetic-like genial infection for a virological incidence rate of 0.31%.
  • (12) "This game is being played like a school ground game of First-to-Ten-Goals-Wins, and Big Phil is looking on like the genial master thinking 'boys will be boys'," writes Justin Kavanagh.
  • (13) But despite sharp intelligence, willingness to put in 18-hour work days, and a genial, low-key manner, Wolfowitz has never before held a leadership position.
  • (14) With a huge open fireplace in the middle of the dining room, this is a where to come for "carne alla griglia" – huge T-Bone steaks, veal and lamb chops, spit-roasted rabbit, chicken and pork – expertly prepared by the genial owner, Derio Vezzier.
  • (15) A case of spontaneous fracture of hypertrophied genial tubercles is reported.
  • (16) Standing next to a freshly planted bed of onions, potatoes, garlic and collard greens, Covington is a genial soul with gentleness built into a giant physical frame that could play American football.
  • (17) During one of the shorthand breaks, I’m tapping out an email on my phone when I hear a voice say: “Where are you from?” He’s polite, genial, complimentary about the Guardian’s coverage, charming in a brittle sort of way, and it’s probably unfair that I feel a bit as if he’s asked which school I went to.
  • (18) Over lunch at Liverpool's Adelphi Hotel, Mac played the genial host with a dash of the elder statesman.
  • (19) A film and pop music buff, D'Ancona is witty, genial and fogeyish.
  • (20) For Donald Trump it will be a weekend of relaxation in familiar surroundings, a round of golf with the Japanese prime minister on his beloved south Florida course and an opportunity to play the genial host at the exclusive members-only Palm Beach club that Trump has dubbed the “winter White House”.

Genteel


Definition:

  • (a.) Possessing or exhibiting the qualities popularly regarded as belonging to high birth and breeding; free from vulgarity, or lowness of taste or behavior; adapted to a refined or cultivated taste; polite; well-bred; as, genteel company, manners, address.
  • (a.) Graceful in mien or form; elegant in appearance, dress, or manner; as, the lady has a genteel person. Law.
  • (a.) Suited to the position of lady or a gentleman; as, to live in a genteel allowance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Cleeve Hill was once the site of a 'bawdy' racecourse, before it was moved down the hill into genteel Cheltenham.
  • (2) While the opening tranche of "tales" derive from the work of forgotten contemporary humorists, the pieces of London reportage that he began to contribute to the Morning Chronicle in autumn 1834 ("Gin Shops", "Shabby-Genteel People", "The Pawnbroker's Shop") are like nothing else in pre-Victorian journalism: bantering and hard-headed by turns, hectic and profuse, falling over themselves to convey every last detail of the metropolitan front-line from which Dickens sent back his dispatches.
  • (3) An hour north of Paris in genteel Chantilly, England have prepared in unusually low-key fashion two years after a humiliating World Cup in which they were sent packing after two matches.
  • (4) Gustave's beatific smile and genteel demeanour work harmoniously with the purple hotel uniforms (Anderson does love a man in uniform).
  • (5) How popular would "Boris Island" – the mayor's fantasy airport in the Thames estuary – be in Clacton and genteel Frinton?
  • (6) From the late 1950s to the 1970s, the new, subsidised British drama was making waves at the Royal Court Theatre and in the regions - and finding critical support from commentators weary of the genteel West End theatre.
  • (7) Last week, the UK Statistics Authority gave him a reprimand that broke from the genteel language of the civil service.
  • (8) They signed Bush expressly as the first major British female exponent of this genteel genre.
  • (9) It is another to be given a genteel kicking by David Hare (who wrote in this newspaper last week that the Labour leader was worse than Neil Kinnock).
  • (10) Today Paris is still the different cities encapsulated by Hugo and Manet; Manet's chic Left Bank haunts are as fashionable and relatively genteel as 150 years ago.
  • (11) The wild, unstable undercliff on the Dorset-Devon border provided John Fowles with the perfect landscape to contrast with the genteel world of Lyme Regis in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (“In summer it is the nearest this country can offer to a tropical jungle”).
  • (12) This being a story about powerful, litigious people, it was composed in befittingly genteel terms; the pair are described as having a "friendship".
  • (13) It's a sleepy little town, beloved by genteel visitors who come for its microclimate – said to be 3C warmer than the rest of France – and exotic gardens.
  • (14) Norbert Smith: A Life was a brilliant satirical one-off on the history of British cinema through the eyes of a genteel luvvie who had seen it all, from 30s Will Hay comedies through to swinging 60s thrillers.
  • (15) There, his mother, in her mid-30s, dressed in a spotless white blouse, and with a Lady Diana-like haircut, was reading a newspaper and sipping from a genteel white teacup.
  • (16) She was born Muriel Camberg to a Jewish engineer father and an English, music-teacher mother, in the genteel Edinburgh inner suburb of Bruntsfield.
  • (17) But in the summer of 1983 this genteel corner, bypassed by shoppers and tourists, found itself a focus of national interest.
  • (18) An acrimonious divorce, scandal over a young model and nude photos at pool parties – Silvio Berlusconi's family traumas might not seem the ideal backdrop for the genteel spouses' programme at a G8 summit.
  • (19) And the genteel visitors who first inspected it had no means of knowing that even as expert an anatomist as Stubbs had got some details wrong.
  • (20) In the genteel, cultivated and fashionable crowd, Manet painted himself and his friends: the poets Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier, and composer Jacques Offenbach.