What's the difference between havoc and mayhem?

Havoc


Definition:

  • (n.) Wide and general destruction; devastation; waste.
  • (v. t.) To devastate; to destroy; to lay waste.
  • (n.) A cry in war as the signal for indiscriminate slaughter.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Pakistan has been elected as the scapegoat because the Lashkar-e-Taiba, widely believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks, are based there and have been the chosen agents of the country's intelligence agency, Inter Services Intelligence, for creating havoc in Kashmir in the past.
  • (2) Even digital news, which has wreaked havoc on all other news, finds the advertising revenues that support it dwindling (or failing to grow).
  • (3) Last month, for example, the Daily Telegraph's Peter Oborne bemoaned their "devastating" fate, in a piece worth quoting at reasonable length, if only to prove that the idea of an out-of-touch elite blithely wreaking havoc is not the preserve of hard-bitten lefties.
  • (4) Though the al-Shabaab camps are not on the scale of those seen a decade ago, the National Security Council has been warned that it only takes one extremist to return home unnoticed to create potential havoc.
  • (5) It was a fairly valiant attempt from Manchester United , but as their players grew leggy from chasing shadows, they dropped deep and let Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery wreak their unique brand of havoc.
  • (6) Rajoy’s hope is that Sánchez’s failure in the upcoming investiture vote wreaks havoc inside the PSOE, potentially opening the door to a scenario that might favour him.
  • (7) Six years later, as the cultural revolution wreaked havoc, young Xi was dispatched to the dusty, impoverished north-western province of Shaanxi to "learn from the masses".
  • (8) Chief executive John Walden said retailers have learned their lesson from last year’s Black Friday sales bonanza, which wreaked havoc on the high street and hit shops’ profits in the run-up to Christmas.
  • (9) Walk more Saño, who shot to fame in 2013 for breaking down in tears and fasting for two weeks at UN climate talks after typhoon Haiyan wreaked havoc in his country, is currently walking 1,500km from Rome to this year’s conference in Paris.
  • (10) But at least they won it, Kim Jung-woo causing mild havoc in the area with a free kick in from the right, Lugano forced to head behind.
  • (11) The "blue" in "Blue Labour" comes from a conservative conviction that market forces, unconstrained, play havoc with the fabric of people's lives.
  • (12) These and other voters could also be attracted to the AfD by media reports that a strong showing for the party could wreak havoc with parliamentary arithmetic.
  • (13) But the US, Israel and other western spy agencies have also spent years slipping faulty parts into black market consignments of equipment heading to Iran – each designed to wreak havoc inside the delicate machinery requirement for enrichment.
  • (14) Patchy showers will continue throughout the weekend in some areas, she added, though in general conditions would be much drier than last weekend, when heavy rain and winds wrought havoc across south-west England and Wales.
  • (15) On the Apollo missions, lunar dust got everywhere – the crews inhaled it and got it in their eyes, and it wreaked mechanical havoc – and on Mars the dust is even more problematic, because it is highly oxidised, chemically reactive, electrically charged and windblown.
  • (16) "The effect on Kenya's export industries is catastrophic as much of the country's exports are based on fresh produce, and a lack of reliable power creates havoc with irrigation and temperature controls in greenhouses," says Steve Mutiso, Oxfam's disaster risk reduction officer.
  • (17) Exactly one year ago, fierce winter weather was causing havoc across the UK .
  • (18) It's also the product of the wider crisis of neoliberal capitalism that first erupted in the banking system five years ago and has since wreaked havoc on public finances, jobs, services and living standards throughout the western world.
  • (19) They were widely derided for being the "Postman Pats" of international terrorism, but the Welsh nationalists' prolific firebombing campaign of holiday cottages begun at the end of the 1970s caused havoc in the rural idyll of the Lleyn peninsula.
  • (20) The storm caused havoc on six of the country's 7,107 islands, so most resorts and tourists activities are open and fully functional, and those that were hit are quickly getting back on their feet in the run up to December and January, two of their busiest months of the year.

Mayhem


Definition:

  • (n.) The maiming of a person by depriving him of the use of any of his members which are necessary for defense or protection. See Maim.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Oddly, Wagner fails to tell us what happens to Alberich, who, despite being responsible for all the Tarantinoesque mayhem, is the only character left standing by the end.
  • (2) MPs said the group's decision to target some of the UK's most prominent Muslim communities was a blatant attempt to provoke mayhem and disorder.
  • (3) The home secretary, the chancellor, and perhaps even the foreign secretary may go, and Labour faces its worst defeat in its history on Thursday, but the prime minister does not recognise his direct responsibility for the mayhem.
  • (4) All that talk of “populism” looks like pussyfooting around now that Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon is stoking up apparently intentional mayhem .
  • (5) The current mayhem over lethal injections has led some prominent public figures to say that the US supreme court should consider imposing a new moratorium.
  • (6) He also issued a warning that anyone responsible for inciting post-election mayhem would be barred entry to the United States, where millions of Nigerians live.
  • (7) Most local media outlets joined the government in presenting the constitution's enactment as the only means of achieving stability following three years of economic hardship and political mayhem since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
  • (8) Like Rona Jaffe's novel of the 50s, The Best of Everything – a book that Rakoff loves and reread before she started work on My Salinger Year – it is concerned with what it feels like to move to the big city, to take on your first job, and to struggle to survive on a tiny salary when all the while your dreams are seemingly being snuffed out at every turn, and your love life is spiralling into muddle and mayhem.
  • (9) Non-governmental organisations reported scenes of mayhem at the port of Piraeus , where about 5,000 men, women and children amassed.
  • (10) Here is what Paulson sees coming: low double-digit inflation by 2012, killing the bond market, and restoring strength to equities and gold; US economic growth capped in 2011 and 2012; a weak US housing market; currency mayhem; and continued dollar weakness as Washington struggles to tackle its debt.
  • (11) The mayhem at the mosque was in many ways one of nightmarish deja-vu for many of those present.
  • (12) These are people who want to destroy our way of life by causing murder and mayhem on the streets of the UK.
  • (13) After being forced to apologise for the mayhem two weeks ago when fewer than 250 police were unable to marshal a crowd of more than 50,000, Scotland Yard sent almost four times as many officers onto the streets and quickly penned marchers into a section of streets.
  • (14) The mayhem came in direct defiance of a warning from Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy that rioters faced stiff punishments.
  • (15) For Thomas Bradley, a barber in Ferguson, the mayhem in this Missouri town has given the expression a literal meaning.
  • (16) He accuses Cameron of being simplistic by suggesting that criminality and police errors alone can explain the mayhem.
  • (17) As Tyler and Odd Future member Hodgy Beats stormed the set for their television debut, they mugged for the cameras, jumped around the interview seating and caused delightful visual mayhem, with The Roots performing as their live backing band.
  • (18) It is shocking to discover that our government has embroiled British personnel in the targeting process that is creating this mayhem.
  • (19) And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.
  • (20) Tunis museum attack: 19 people killed after hostage drama at tourist site Read more Mounting mayhem in neighbouring Libya is part of the problem as hardline Islamist militants have managed to cross porous borders or have smuggled weapons to like-minded extremists such as Ansar al-Sharia, which has branches in Tunisia and elsewhere across the Maghreb region.