What's the difference between humble and lowly?

Humble


Definition:

  • (superl.) Near the ground; not high or lofty; not pretentious or magnificent; unpretending; unassuming; as, a humble cottage.
  • (superl.) Thinking lowly of one's self; claiming little for one's self; not proud, arrogant, or assuming; thinking one's self ill-deserving or unworthy, when judged by the demands of God; lowly; waek; modest.
  • (a.) Hornless. See Hummel.
  • (v. t.) To bring low; to reduce the power, independence, or exaltation of; to lower; to abase; to humilate.
  • (v. t.) To make humble or lowly in mind; to abase the pride or arrogance of; to reduce the self-sufficiently of; to make meek and submissive; -- often used rexlexively.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) You get like three days where you have to show up?” But the younger rival managed to turn difficult questions into an opportunity to boast of his humble background and promise of change.
  • (2) Chelsea, racism and the Premier League’s role | Letters Read more Mighty Manchester United had just been humbled by lowly Leicester City, battered 5-3.
  • (3) The classic Jedi response to subservience can be seen in the contrast between Luke’s first meeting with C-3PO – “I see, Sir”; “You can call me Luke”; “I see, Sir Luke,”; “No, just Luke” – and Qui-Gon Jinn meeting Jar Jar Binks: “Mesa your humble servant”; “That won’t be necessary”.
  • (4) In line with his modest and humble public image, Francis exhibits a strong taste for Italian neorealist cinema, which eschewed Hollywood razzle-dazzle and told morally powerful stories set among the working class.
  • (5) As it has elevated "hygge" (cosiness) into a way of life, Copenhagen has elevated the humble bicycle into a cultural icon, a pillar of its image.
  • (6) Recalling the triumphant welcome into Jerusalem, Francis said Jesus "awakened so many hopes in the heart, above all among humble, simple, poor, forgotten people, those who don't matter in the eyes of the world".
  • (7) Celebrity and success came to him in the George Clooney tradition: when he was older and wiser and better at handling it, when a decade of scraping by in Hollywood, in every sense, had made him humble and more human.
  • (8) Beginning as a humble meat processor in 1955, Farmfoods opened its first experimental shop in Aberdeen in the early 1970s.
  • (9) And you have humbled me with your commitment to our country.
  • (10) Three precious points appeared to be theirs and they stood not only to crown a fightback that had hardly been trailed, but to soothe the pain of the 6-0 humbling at Chelsea from last Saturday.
  • (11) ?” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Boris Johnson ‘humbled’ to be appointed foreign secretary – video There was also bewilderment at Johnson’s appointment in Beijing’s diplomatic circles.
  • (12) Qatar’s royal family may have snapped up Canary Wharf for £2.6bn this week, adding to its London portfolio of Harrods and the Shard skyscraper, but the Gulf billionaires’ property spree has finally run into a dead end – a humble town hall bureaucrat.
  • (13) We honour Otis and his complete and humbling fascination with all things outdoors, big and small, near and far.
  • (14) Koroma said he was “humbled by the dedication” of 35,000 Ebola response workers “whose heroism is without parallel in the history of our country”.
  • (15) From humble roots in Philadelphia, he has more than once gained, lost and regained sway in LA showbusiness.
  • (16) Thus humbled, consider Goethe's admonition as a call to further scrutiny and investigation, "Theory and experience are opposed to each other in constant conflict.
  • (17) Tony Selznick , taught Bowie to roller-skate for the Day-In Day-Out video David came across as very humble and in between careers, almost.
  • (18) But Malala, who has interviewed her and followed her on the campaign trail, found Madikizela-Mandela less than humble.
  • (19) Siti’s mother, Benah, said the Indonesian attacker came from a humble village background.
  • (20) In return for the biggest bailout in global financial history – rescue funds from the EU and IMF amounting to €240bn (£188bn) – it was hoped that old mentalities would change and a nation humbled by near-bankruptcy would finally dump its culture of deceit.

Lowly


Definition:

  • (a.) Not high; not elevated in place; low.
  • (a.) Low in rank or social importance.
  • (a.) Not lofty or sublime; humble.
  • (a.) Having a low esteem of one's own worth; humble; meek; free from pride.
  • (adv.) In a low manner; humbly; meekly; modestly.
  • (adv.) In a low condition; meanly.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) You will have to offer leadership and a sense of belonging to the civil service's lowly clerks and frontline staff in the Department for Work and Pensions, struggling not just with Iain Duncan Smith's fantasies of benefit rationalisation, but sharp contractors snapping at their heels.
  • (2) Chelsea, racism and the Premier League’s role | Letters Read more Mighty Manchester United had just been humbled by lowly Leicester City, battered 5-3.
  • (3) Pakistan repeated the trick in the 1990s, sending jihadists to stoke insurgency in Indian-held Kashmir and giving massive assistance to the Taliban, the once lowly mullahs’ movement that had seized control of Afghanistan in 1989.
  • (4) It has exalted the lowly and brought down the mighty from their seats.
  • (5) But one might have imagined Corbyn would have used the opportunity to send one of the really big power players of the new shadow cabinet – his transport spokeswoman Lilian Greenwood, say, or Nia Griffith, who has the Wales portfolio – rather than his lowly shadow chancellor.
  • (6) Historically, our masters have always imagined we lowly peasants will digest information more easily if it is written, for example, in a speech bubble coming out of the mouth of an imaginary squirrel pedestrian in yellow loon pants.
  • (7) Malignant neoplasias consisted of tumorously proliferated, lowly differentiated sebaceous cells.
  • (8) One is a guy who has to try and take a lowly band of unknowns up against far better equipped adversaries, while having been tempted to join the other side, and the other one is … oh, hang on" – James Thomson.
  • (9) Within six years of beginning as a lowly prop assistant, he led the show to national syndication and had an Emmy to show for his efforts.
  • (10) One dev says: "My biggest bugbear at the moment (on my lowly 3GS) is the number of times app quit due to memory shortages, or because they've taken too long to load.
  • (11) An evening transformed by Adomah’s second-half liberation from the bench – (the winger created the excellent Stuani’s second) – ended with Boro looking the more convincing promotion candidates, but Brentford had played well enough to suggest their current lowly position is a false one.
  • (12) With such knowledge comes a predictable illusion of power, though this is all too regularly punctured by the indignity of being kicked out of shiny receptions and told to use an entrance more befitting of our lowly status – or of having my pronunciation of “Southwark Street” incorrectly corrected by a receptionist, who gives her colleague a sidelong smirk, commiserating over my supposed ignorance.
  • (13) In "Marching (As Seen from the Left File)", for instance, he describes the men from the perspective of one of them and in "Break of Day in the Trenches" he identifies with the lowly rat against the "haughty athletes".
  • (14) Basic literacy and numeracy skills are low, meaning that the children who drop out of school are on course for a life in lowly-paid jobs.
  • (15) Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies trace the meteoric rise of Cromwell from the lowly son of a blacksmith to a ruthless political leader.
  • (16) In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet's Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José.
  • (17) Material released from the highly tumorigenic cells in response to increased cell density was also fucosylated (whereas shed material from lowly tumorigenic cells was not), suggesting a biological role for shed fucosylated antigens in tumor aggression.
  • (18) The G + C content of the A. nidulans genome is close to 50%, indicating little overall mutational bias, and so the codon usage of lowly expressed genes is as expected in the absence of selection pressure at silent sites.
  • (19) But my colleagues at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - where I spent the summer of 2000 as a lowly research assistant - questioned such reserve.
  • (20) There has been a decade-long legal battle by the Guardian involving rulings by 16 different judges, stretching from a lowly information tribunal to the supreme court, the highest in the land.