What's the difference between hero and martyr?

Hero


Definition:

  • (n.) An illustrious man, supposed to be exalted, after death, to a place among the gods; a demigod, as Hercules.
  • (n.) A man of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering; a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event; hence, a great or illustrious person.
  • (n.) The principal personage in a poem, story, and the like, or the person who has the principal share in the transactions related; as Achilles in the Iliad, Ulysses in the Odyssey, and Aeneas in the Aeneid.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Mendl's candy colours contrast sharply with the gothic garb of our hero's enemies and the greys of the prison uniforms – as well as scenes showing the hotel later, in the 1960s, its opulence lost beneath a drab communist refurb.
  • (2) They'd started so well, too, winger Oreste Corbatta putting Argentina ahead after three minutes in the 1958 groups, but the 1954 hero Helmut Rahn scored twice in an eventual 3-1 win for West Germany.
  • (3) One of her heroes, one of her mentors was Saul Alinsky,” he said, referring to the radical community organiser whose book, Rules for Radicals, he claimed contains an acknowledgement of Lucifer.
  • (4) Maggie and Joe Forber win the 2013 Unsung Hero (es) of the Year award.
  • (5) In the wake of the horrors of the second world war it was the proudest gift to a land fit for heroes, delivered at a time when the national debt made our current crisis look like an embarrassing bar tab.
  • (6) "With the full backing of British Gymnastics, the trainers who helped take Smith and Tweddle to Olympic glory are ready to turn the nation's pop stars, actors, newsreaders and chefs into heroes of the high bars and titans of the tumble track," it added.
  • (7) The former Massachusetts governor, like many Republicans, expected the Trump campaign to implode last summer, after he insulted Mexicans and said Arizona senator and 2008 Republican nominee John McCain was not a “war hero” because “I like people who weren’t captured.” This year, days after Trump did not immediately disavow an expression of support from David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, Romney said one of his sons was driving him to an airport when he asked: “When the grandkids ask ‘What did you do to stop Donald Trump ?’ what are you going to say?’” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Romney launches extensive attack on Trump: ‘A genius he is not’ That, Romney said, was the final push.
  • (8) Dickens's last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend , has a mysterious hero, John Rokesmith, who turns out to be someone different from the person we were told he was.
  • (9) At the end of World War II, when another generation of heroes returned home from combat, they built the strongest economy and middle class the world has ever known.
  • (10) Kafka's faceless and amoral heroes, on the other hand, inspire no sympathy at all.
  • (11) Thank God the heroes of SWAT-team prevented the worst.
  • (12) From campaigner to prisoner to President to global hero, Nelson Mandela will always be remembered for his dignity, integrity and his values of equality and justice.
  • (13) Northampton toiled manfully to seek a way back into the tie with Holmes, two-goal hero from the first match, making a number of threatening runs.
  • (14) So President Mujica may be thinking: "why not take the risk and embrace the possibility of becoming the first marijuana hero and the man who thwarted drug dealers?"
  • (15) André Villas-Boas Villas-Boas was only 33 when he won the Europa League with Porto Gianluca Vialli Sven-Göran Eriksson Pep Guardiola You got… Perfection You hero You star You've done very well there You've done well there You've done OK there Sorry to break it to you but that's a bad score Come on.
  • (16) "I saw Hutton in his prime; another time, another time," as his couplet about his cricketing hero, Sir Leonard Hutton, has it.
  • (17) What he liked best was to talk to the cricket pro, Bert Wensley, formerly of Sussex, about such heroes as Maurice Tate, Duleepsinhji and HT Bartlett, and to encourage Bert to enlarge on his reasons for describing Sir Home Gordon, Bart, the overlord of Sussex cricket, as a "shit" - the first time we heard that word.
  • (18) Seeing the performance later in Edinburgh, I was impressed by Briers' ability to encompass the hero's rage and madness.
  • (19) Reagan's youthful hero was FDR – another optimist, albeit a far steelier one –  who turned the federal government into the agent of recovery from the Great Depression and of victory in World War II.
  • (20) "The FA decision-makers can become the heroes that protected the national game.

Martyr


Definition:

  • (n.) One who, by his death, bears witness to the truth of the gospel; one who is put to death for his religion; as, Stephen was the first Christian martyr.
  • (n.) Hence, one who sacrifices his life, his station, or what is of great value to him, for the sake of principle, or to sustain a cause.
  • (v. t.) To put to death for adhering to some belief, esp. Christianity; to sacrifice on account of faith or profession.
  • (v. t.) To persecute; to torment; to torture.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The clashes between the moralistic Levin and his friend Oblonsky, sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry, and Levin's linkage of modernity to Oblonsky's attitudes – that social mores are to be worked around and subordinated to pleasure, that families are base camps for off-base nooky – undermine one possible reading of Anna Karenina , in which Anna is a martyr in the struggle for the modern sexual freedoms that we take for granted, taken down by the hypocritical conservative elite to which she, her lover and her husband belong.
  • (2) As a result of the blast, there were martyrs and wounded among our heroic armed comrades,” the military said.
  • (3) We will all be martyred in this fight.” Attempted coup in Turkey: what we know so far Read more He sent his bodyguard to fetch his personal gun.
  • (4) Balyana’s mayor said the statue was intended to portray a “martyred soldier hugging his mother”.
  • (5) We ought not treat a traitor like a martyr.” Responding to Cotton, a White House official said it was worth considering that the Republican supported the presidency of “someone who publicly praised WikiLeaks” and who “encouraged a foreign government to hack his opponent”, in reference to Trump.
  • (6) We made a mass prayers for the ten bodies and then buried them in Martyrs cemetery.
  • (7) Aguila Saleh said there were a “number of martyrs” in LNA ranks, without giving a figure.
  • (8) To most of us, Ken Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian activist and a martyr, a brave and inspiring campaigner who led his Ogoni people's struggle against the decades-long defilement of their land by Big Oil, and ended up paying for it with his life.
  • (9) So wrote the Negro author Louis Lomax, catching the crucial spark that made Martin Luther King , jun., stand out head and shoulders from his fellow-ministers in the South and step into the ranks of the world's martyrs.
  • (10) "We told the mujahideen to leave it to us ordinary Fallujans, but those bloody bastards, the sheikhs and the clerics, are busy painting some bloody mad picture of heaven and martyrs and the victory of the mujahideen," said Ali, another refugee.
  • (11) If she then married a radical jihadi, her status as the widow of a martyr would extend to him in terror circles.
  • (12) Two other men, Alwyn Jones and George Taylor, became martyrs for the cause after they accidentally blew themselves up behind the library in Abergele, Conwy, while priming a bomb.
  • (13) But it was Laura, the martyr of East Dulwich, whom traditionalists appointed chief victim of the changes: the poster girl for affluent, stay-at-home mothers.
  • (14) 'The first convert to Islam was a woman, and the first martyr, and women fought on the battlefield alongside men 1,400 years ago.
  • (15) Searches of their homes revealed images of Islamic propaganda on both of their computers, including images of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) flags and martyr literature.
  • (16) The day after Zeidan's removal, the powerful Misrata militia, allied to congress, launched an offensive to retake the blockaded oil terminals, storming the base of an army special forces unit – the Zawiya Martyrs brigade – in the central city of Sirte, leaving five people dead.
  • (17) We have paid a lot for the security and stability that we currently live in, so I ask all Egyptians for the sake of the martyrs and the blood to take care of their country,” Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the president, said in a speech to the nation on Saturday.
  • (18) As he prepares to go into battle, the militant wishes that he and his wife could become “martyrs” at the same time.
  • (19) Read more “I carried four martyrs from the scene,” one man told local TV, his clothes caked in blood as he sat on the ground near the site of the bombing, having rushed to the scene after hearing the first explosion.
  • (20) Hassan's remarks on a television programme, during which he also said Pakistani troops killed while supporting the US conflict with the Taliban should not be considered martyrs, were described in an official army statement as "painful and unfortunate".