What's the difference between insouciant and nonchalant?

Insouciant


Definition:

  • (a.) Careless; heedless; indifferent; unconcerned.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) For every drop shot that was loose, lazy and tossed away a point, there was another that smacked of insouciant brilliance.
  • (2) In the Russian gallery, for example, the courageous Vadim Zakharov presents a pointed version of the Danaë myth in which an insouciant dictator (of whom it is hard not to think: Putin) sits on a high beam on a saddle, shelling nuts all day while gold coins rain down from a vast shower-head only to be hoisted in buckets by faceless thuggish men in suits.
  • (3) While deplorable and to a degree self-defeating, this insouciant defiance also makes a grim kind of sense, both historically and reinforced by recent events.
  • (4) Equally popular was the stylish Borsalino, starring Belmondo and Alain Delon as insouciant gangsters in 1930s Marseilles.
  • (5) At the same time, it is important for our enjoyment of Bake Off that the insouciance does not go all the way (the inquisitive camera, for example, captures Ian’s set jaw, betraying his iron will).
  • (6) The minutes of the policy convention show DSD representatives insouciant about sharing metadata on Australians – so long as it had been hoovered up “unintentionally” they were happy to store and to disclose it without obtaining a warrant.
  • (7) But Putin appeared insouciant in the face of the western manoeuvres.
  • (8) It would defy every norm that is America.” Candidates were not only insouciant about human rights abroad; they also felt comfortable doubting rights enshrined by US law.
  • (9) DeepMind is excited to have joined forces with Google,” it says, with an unapologetic insouciance not normally seen with the search giant’s other acquisitions.
  • (10) No one assumes that New Zealand will have an impact in South Africa, yet insouciance is an asset when other sides are so overwrought.
  • (11) I have such pale legs and they never burn!” I insouciantly declared to onlookers, a mere 12 hours before I began convulsing, shaking, sweating and finding myself unable to walk for three days.
  • (12) For this tale of a young waitress with an insouciant approach to haircuts, garden gnomes, and life, Craig Lucas supplies the book, Daniel Messé and Nathan Tyse the music and lyrics.
  • (13) Townsfolk were also displaying a distinct insouciance to pledges by green activists to hold a day of protest there and trash a field of GM crops at the town's Rothamsted research station.
  • (14) He was insouciant, dapper, elegant, somehow intensely English – though O'Toole himself was an Irishman and proud of it – and also outrageously sexy.
  • (15) It is a look that matches his backbench style: unflappable but not insouciant; with authority but no menace and, it once seemed, palpably relieved to be off the front line.
  • (16) The former chief secretary to the treasury and shadow everything produces her lanyard with dazzling insouciance and continues to fish-dance her way in.
  • (17) At the time I remember thinking about those pictures in terms of horror films, trying to imagine the context in which people might so casually abuse power and so insouciantly photograph their own crimes.
  • (18) In a display of Gallic insouciance, the French identified themselves as both the most arrogant and least arrogant.
  • (19) No rush, lads, you whistle an insouciant trill and scratch the old jacksie.
  • (20) Rooney plundered two goals in two minutes with almost insouciant ease and could have had a hat-trick before the hour came up, as the defensive solidity Liverpool had shown in the first half evaporated in front of the Stretford End.

Nonchalant


Definition:

  • (a.) Indifferent; careless; cool.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) All of this in the same tones of weary nonchalance you might use to stop the dog nosing around in the bin.
  • (2) There was nothing accidental about Saffiyah Khan’s easy nonchalance, grinning through the spitting rage of Ian Crossland at the EDL rally in Birmingham city centre at the weekend; Ieshia Evans knew there was more power in calm when she approached the police in Baton Rouge last summer.
  • (3) So it is only a fool, like me, who would walk nonchalantly around the headland during a high wind.
  • (4) In interviews during the Star Wars years, Fisher affected nonchalance about that break-up.
  • (5) Part of their appeal was their apparent nonchalance, which tended to be mistaken for cool but was really, she says, just gauche bemusement.
  • (6) Early in the second half, Rivera, with a splendid burst of individualism, flicked the ball over his head to beat one man, accelerated past two more, and sent a superb shot which the little goalkeeper almost nonchalantly fisted over the top.
  • (7) The concert has been long prepared, Josh and his friend Ahmed from the perilous estates nearby laying tracks to "Jessie Wright" and another song for Agnes – "a tribute to a girl got shot in Hoxton", Josh says, with apparent nonchalance, but a stab of sorrowful anger in his eye.
  • (8) And the streets of Athens looked like Glastonbury – minus the mud; plus the teargas … Standing in London's Greek heartland, I feel a curious detachment, a curious out-of-body nonchalance that people also describe when they're remembering a car crash.
  • (9) When I ask if his public attacks on Blatter and Fifa might have been rashly intemperate, his tone is nonchalantly defiant.
  • (10) She was characterised by her very specific sense of failure, which was rueful but nonchalant at the same time: Pearson's iconic image had Kate Reddy smashing up shop-bought mince pies to make them look as though she'd made them herself.
  • (11) As Glastonbury virgins, they treated the world's biggest festival with the same nonchalant naivety with which they'd conducted their entire career, and with the added issues of an enormous crowd and 2007's ultra-sensitive perimeter sound limiters, it made for a distant and underwhelming experience.
  • (12) It hardly needs saying how rare this is in an industry where interviewees, generally, come wobbling  at you like carnival floats, the girls with a small army of wardrobe support staff and the boys trembling from the effort of looking nonchalant in their duds.
  • (13) She stayed with my eldest daughter until I had moved house, and is now back here doing her thing, all emerald eyes and feline nonchalance.
  • (14) Creditably, McLeod retained sufficient poise to nonchalantly extend his right foot and dink the ball over the advancing Mannone.
  • (15) Given how perfect Ford’s nonchalant swagger works for the character, it seems criminal that there was ever any other option.
  • (16) I climbed too fast for vertigo to strike, scissored my legs over the railings, dropped on to concrete, rolled, picked myself up, then endeavoured to walk across the neatly trimmed lawn with a nonchalant air.
  • (17) This bullish assurance is bookended by Okoye's studied nonchalance.
  • (18) For extra kudos, hold court with the argument that the avant-bland looks on the catwalk are the natural extension of how Phoebe Philo, current queen of catwalk cool, has made the tradition of giving artistic and retro references to a collection look old hat by her habit of shrugging nonchalantly and insisting the clothes she designs are just, y'know, stuff she wants to wear.
  • (19) Of course it’s nice to be up 1-0 and not 0-1, but we didn’t play that well and we’re going to have to do it much, much better on Sunday … they are more athletic than us and stronger than us.” Recovered from an ankle injury, Spurs guard Tony Parker contributed 19 points and reacted to questions about the heat with nonchalance.
  • (20) Yet no matter how many people are bellowing at him, Lansley perpetually wears the nonchalant expression of a man killing time by humming cheerfully in a lift.