What's the difference between insubstantial and tenuous?

Insubstantial


Definition:

  • (a.) Unsubstantial; not real or strong.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Variation in risk in association with sugar and starch intake was also insubstantial, while for fiber, there was a nonuniform reduction in risk at the three uppermost fifths of intake.
  • (2) Alistair Darling's announcement of a pay freeze for top public servants was today described as cynical and insubstantial by the Conservative leader, David Cameron .
  • (3) He also held a permit to work as a security guard, which he did at a courthouse in Port St Lucie, Florida, even though he was interviewed three times by the FBI in 2013 and 2014 following separate reports of extremist behavior and connections to terrorism that were in the end deemed insubstantial.
  • (4) Carbamazepine caused statistically significant, but clinically insubstantial, reductions in serum sodium and calcium, but not in the other electrolytes measured.
  • (5) Carbamazepine was found to cause statistically significant, but clinically insubstantial, decreases in white blood cell indexes.
  • (6) "I think it is slightly cynical in its timing; it is rather insubstantial in its content and it is not part of an overall approach," Cameron said on GMTV.
  • (7) The teachers in this study underestimated the extent to which their students could comprehend independently, often based on insubstantial evidence.
  • (8) This is rare, but has been observed in very similar form in association with this disorder in a not insubstantial proportion of cases.
  • (9) Last week Sheridan's wife Gail, also 46, was cleared of also committing perjury at the 2006 libel trial after the prosecution decided the case against her was too weak and insubstantial.
  • (10) Many doctors believe that the discomfort felt during such procedures is insubstantial.
  • (11) He argues that the hope that AGI is possible rests on a similarly insubstantial metaphor, namely that the mind is "essentially" a computer program.
  • (12) Since less than 1% of the intracellular 23Na has been estimated to be immobilized, fractional immobilization of intracellular 39K is also likely to be insubstantial.
  • (13) The show is about her “trying to be an adult”, she says (she’s 28), and it flits insubstantially from a duff audience participation game called “Which Disney princess are you?”, via a riff about still getting presents from Santa, to a joke about her anxiety that her friends are all getting married.
  • (14) Some user charges may be justified, especially if these revenues result insubstantial improvements in the quality and availability of services.
  • (15) Paget's disease has been ascribed several times to specimens of archeological bone but, in the absence of microscopic examination, the evidence remains insubstantial.
  • (16) Thus, the claim of a causal relationship between oral contraceptive steroids and thromboembolism does not appear to be firmly founded, and the belief that predisposing factors increase the risk to contraceptive users is equally insubstantial.
  • (17) The plastic body felt "insubstantial" and the mono speaker on the back "only fair".
  • (18) The error in pulse oximetry caused by the presence of carboxyhemoglobin is insubstantial, but methemoglobin gives either an understimation or an overestimation at high or low oxygen saturation, respectively, the turning point being near 70% saturation.
  • (19) I love trees, but the case for forest offsets still strikes me as insubstantial and, ultimately, as ungraspable as air.
  • (20) Variation in risk of BPED across levels defined in terms of daily total alcohol intake, and in terms of daily alcohol intake from individual beverages, was mostly insubstantial and not dose-dependent.

Tenuous


Definition:

  • (a.) Thin; slender; small; minute.
  • (a.) Rare; subtile; not dense; -- said of fluids.
  • (a.) Lacking substance, as a tenuous argument.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Diagnosis based on the character of the stridor alone is tenuous, and consideration of presentation other than the stridor is discussed in the management of these infants.
  • (2) Indian women are aware of our tenuous grip on our rights.
  • (3) Rising losses among the nearly 350,000-strong Afghan army and police, and a desertion rate of about 50,000 a year, also support Karzai's contention that control of large parts of the country remains tenuous.
  • (4) The results suggest that chronic sunlight exposure may be associated with an impediment to normal maturation of human dermal collagen resulting in tenuous amount of HHL.
  • (5) What the film does, though, is use these incidents to build an idiosyncratic but insightful picture of Lawrence, played indelibly by Peter O'Toole in his debut role: a complicated, egomaniacal and physically masochistic man, at once god-like and all too flawed, with a tenuous grip both on reality and on sanity.
  • (6) Because of disruption of the fasciocutaneous circulation, the perfusion of randomly based flaps is frequently tenuous.
  • (7) New employment data today suggested that hurricane Sandy is hurting already tenuous US job growth.
  • (8) Although extrapolation from animal studies may be tenuous, the present findings may explain the link between nutrition and the occurrence of alcoholic pancreatitis.
  • (9) If any of them is neglected or isolated from the rest, the whole will be impoverished-the student will suffocate in disconnected, empirical facts; fanciful theories will be spun from tenuous evidence; well established theory will be neglected by the practitioner; the best-intentioned schemes will have disastrous long-term consequences.
  • (10) However, circumstantial evidence is beginning to provide a tenuous link between smoking and the protease-antiprotease imbalance hypothesis.
  • (11) Though one possible mechanism for this reversal may include the inhibition of NAD-kinase by cAMP, there is evidence to suggest that such a direct cause-effect relationship is at present tenuous.
  • (12) We feel that tenuous attachments of the vitreous body to the fovea could exert traction on the vitreo-retinal interface or shrinkage of a fibrocellular membrane on the inner foveal surface could lead to the observations made by us.
  • (13) As has been long predicted by military critics of a bombing campaign, Mayville said Isis was already changing its tactics in response to the air strikes, particularly around Mt Sinjar, where on Saturday US warplanes attacked Isis positions surrounding the mountain where tens of thousands of Iraqi Yazidis have taken a tenuous refuge.
  • (14) In the years since the housing market bottomed out, Tremont and other pockets of Cleveland have witnessed a tenuous revitalisation thanks to newcomers seeking city lifestyles and new investment in 21st-century industry.
  • (15) Although the bright green light helped counteract sleepiness, any causal link with changes in melatonin output seem tenuous.
  • (16) America's arch enemy, Muammar Gaddafi, had thousands of troops camped in the remote desert of northern Chad, a forward front in his pan-African expansionist plan, but a thousand miles from Tripoli on tenuous supply lines and thus highly vulnerable.
  • (17) Data indicate that non-rehospitalization is associated with a stance of "positive withdrawal" (Corin 1990); it is characterized by a position at a distance from social roles and social relationships, combined with various strategies for keeping more tenuous links with the social environment.
  • (18) However, their entry into force was delayed for a "few days" according to a statement from Brussels, to leave time to assess the implementation of a tenuous ceasefire agreement in Ukraine negotiated last Friday.
  • (19) Although these results suggest a tenuous relationship between scrapie pathology and the integrity of neurotransmitter systems, it is possible that compensatory neurochemical changes in uncompromised neuronal populations may have masked potentially specific neurotransmitter effects.
  • (20) Mair’s links with far-right groups in the US and South Africa are well documented, but his associations with similar organisations closer to home appear more tenuous.