What's the difference between incantation and spell?

Incantation


Definition:

  • (n.) The act or process of using formulas sung or spoken, with occult ceremonies, for the purpose of raising spirits, producing enchantment, or affecting other magical results; enchantment.
  • (n.) A formula of words used as above.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It incants the motto of the Bill Shankly school of cliche: that football is not a matter of life and death, it is far more important.
  • (2) Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman star as neighbours Mrs Silver and Mr Hoppy, who are brought together when Hoppy whispers a magic growth spell to Silver’s pet tortoise, then attempts to bring the incantation’s power to fruition.
  • (3) Place names and plant names assume the status of chants or litanies: spectral taxa incanted as elegy, or as a means to conjure back.
  • (4) Take the cue from Classic FM's manic incantation, "Just relax".
  • (5) Elements of Western psychological medical methods (such as environmental manipulation, enquiry into the unconscious motivation of behaviour, and suggestion through incantation) were evident in this practice, although applied without the systematic coherence of clinical medicine.
  • (6) Beyoncé’s use of “slay” is an additional embrace of the language of the black queer community and, in its repetition, it’s an incantation that can slay haters, slay patriarchy, to slay white supremacy.
  • (7) It was, said one contemporary, like watching "a magician, performing his incantations in public".
  • (8) She'd snarl like an angry Dylan or croon with tenderness, punctuating Lenny Kaye's guitar work with murmured incantations.
  • (9) A familiar ritual played out each Saturday night in autumn, beginning with tension-creating music and the basso profundo of Peter Dickson, whose pause-laden announcements made his voice as recognisable to British viewers as Richard Dimbleby's had been half a century earlier, and ending with the magical incantations "calls cost 50p from landlines, mobile networks may vary" and "please ask the bill-payer's permission", which caused millions of digits to press urgently on keypads.
  • (10) Some interesting points that emanated from the study include the healers' explanation that a person's essence is transmitted to his personal effects, which are used with incantation to inflict the deaf person.
  • (11) Long to reign over us – that old incantation has worked, so next week the Queen’s reign becomes the longest ever.
  • (12) In his article, 'The Effectiveness of Symbols,' Lévi-Strauss contends that the details of a Cuna birth incantation evoke specific physiological responses from parturient women, aiding them through difficult labors.
  • (13) Witches at Their Incantations (perhaps illustrating his own poem Strega), in the National Gallery, is a hideous nocturnal fantasy of the black sabbath, full of skeletal monstrosities, a hanged man, stolen babies, naked hags and evil brews.
  • (14) "I have friends who come by and say 'Om' [a Buddhist incantation]," he said.
  • (15) Inside the Palais, the delegates recite his name like an incantation.
  • (16) The meme artists got to work on that one, imagining covfefe might be Trump’s safe word, or else an incantation that could summon an ancient spirit wizard from the deep .
  • (17) But there were also real concession to the Kurds: the scrapping of Turkish nationalist school incantations that Kurdish children have to intone every day; the likelihood of bigger and easier Kurdish representation in the Ankara parliament; Kurdish parties allowed to campaign in their own language and to benefit more easily from state funding.
  • (18) His argument, which analyzes the incantation as a text divorced from its social setting, has drawn criticism from students of Cuna society on a number of substantive points, primarily centering around the difficulties that the special linguistic form of ritual language would present to a non-adept.
  • (19) If the patient lacks a thorough comprehension of the mythic details, how can the incantation change her physiological processes?
  • (20) Yet institutions and ideologies cannot survive by mere incantation or reminders of past horrors.

Spell


Definition:

  • (n.) A spelk, or splinter.
  • (v. t.) To supply the place of for a time; to take the turn of, at work; to relieve; as, to spell the helmsman.
  • (n.) The relief of one person by another in any piece of work or watching; also, a turn at work which is carried on by one person or gang relieving another; as, a spell at the pumps; a spell at the masthead.
  • (n.) The time during which one person or gang works until relieved; hence, any relatively short period of time, whether a few hours, days, or weeks.
  • (n.) One of two or more persons or gangs who work by spells.
  • (n.) A gratuitous helping forward of another's work; as, a logging spell.
  • (n.) A story; a tale.
  • (n.) A stanza, verse, or phrase supposed to be endowed with magical power; an incantation; hence, any charm.
  • (v. t.) To tell; to relate; to teach.
  • (v. t.) To put under the influence of a spell; to affect by a spell; to bewitch; to fascinate; to charm.
  • (v. t.) To constitute; to measure.
  • (v. t.) To tell or name in their proper order letters of, as a word; to write or print in order the letters of, esp. the proper letters; to form, as words, by correct orthography.
  • (v. t.) To discover by characters or marks; to read with difficulty; -- usually with out; as, to spell out the sense of an author; to spell out a verse in the Bible.
  • (v. i.) To form words with letters, esp. with the proper letters, either orally or in writing.
  • (v. i.) To study by noting characters; to gain knowledge or learn the meaning of anything, by study.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We outline a protocol for presenting the diagnosis of pseudoseizure with the goal of conveying to the patient the importance of knowing the nonepileptic nature of the spells and the need for psychiatric follow-up.
  • (2) The government did not spell out the need for private holders of bank debt to take any losses – known as haircuts – under its plans but many analysts believe that this position is untenable.
  • (3) The tasks which appeared to present the most difficulties for the patients were written spelling, pragmatic processing tasks like sentence disambiguation and proverb interpretation.
  • (4) John Carver witnessed signs of much-needed improvement from the visitors in a purposeful spell either side of the interval but it was not enough to prevent a fifth successive Premier League defeat.
  • (5) The lesson, spelled out by Oak Creek's mayor, Steve Saffidi, was that it shouldn't have taken a tragedy for Sikhs, or anyone else, to find acceptance.
  • (6) Likud warned: “Peres will divide Jerusalem.” Arab states feared that his dream of a borderless Middle East spelled Israeli economic colonialism by stealth.
  • (7) This could spell disaster for small farmers, says Million Belay, co-ordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.
  • (8) In addition to expected differences in spelling and reading, probands obtained significantly (P less than or equal to .01) lower scores than controls on tests of other cognitive abilities.
  • (9) Despite fulfilling a boyhood wish to play for Milan when he returned to Italy, the striker admitted he erred in taking his career back to Serie A, having had a controversial spell at Internazionale before City recruited him for £17.5m in August 2010.
  • (10) Yesterday, John McDonnell spelled out the new Labour leadership’s public investment-driven economic alternative to austerity.
  • (11) Recognition memory was assessed by asking subjects to indicate which words from a longer list were presented during the spelling test.
  • (12) It was a spell in which the Dutch were in the ascendancy.
  • (13) When I wrote this week's public manager column pointing out that there are still too few women in senior public sector leadership roles, it didn't occur to me that I would have to spell out the reasons why it might be a good idea to have a few more women in top positions.
  • (14) Sigurdsson joined Reading as a youngster in 2005, and had loan spells at Crewe and Shrewsbury before breaking into the first team.
  • (15) Slow speech development occurred frequently in developmental and acquired spelling dysgraphic children.
  • (16) True, that comment was made early in Guardiola’s spell as Bayern manager and perhaps it was just a way of endearing himself to his new captain, but there is no doubt the former Barcelona manager adores Lahm.
  • (17) Since ALS occurs mostly in older age groups, this brings up the possibility that aging changes in the brain could play a causative role in the origin of such spells.
  • (18) A long spell of ultra-low interest rates has not driven a rise in inequality in the UK, the deputy governor of the Bank of England has said, rebuffing criticism that central bank policy had hurt some households.
  • (19) 3.05pm BST The Russian foreign ministry has again spelled out Sergei Lavrov's objections to threatening Syria with force if it doesn't comply with the chemical weapons agreement.
  • (20) However, when spelling ability was investigated, a heritability of 0.53 was obtained, increasing to 0.75 when intelligence was controlled.