What's the difference between irksome and meddlesome?

Irksome


Definition:

  • (a.) Wearisome; tedious; disagreeable or troublesome by reason of long continuance or repetition; as, irksome hours; irksome tasks.
  • (a.) Weary; vexed; uneasy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "Well, it is slightly irksome when people try to compare the two.
  • (2) Peter Barlow's son, Our Simon, is particularly irksome, and Faye, who has been used to address the issue of bullying, has it coming.
  • (3) In Manhattan, she is cast as a pretentious, irksome snob of a journalist.
  • (4) After a prolonged chuckle, Russell drops his impersonation of Groundhog Day's irksome insurance salesman, a minor but intensely memorable character, and explains excitedly that he recently met Andie MacDowell, one of the film's stars.
  • (5) As the Press Association reports, he told a committee that said sticking to international rules could be "irksome" at times.
  • (6) Then, in 2010, he was cast in Friday Night Dinner, getting the part of irksome estate agent Jonny, he thinks, because "I was the most annoying person they could find."
  • (7) The suggestion that Bastille's fans somehow aren't proper music fans is, understandably, particularly irksome.
  • (8) The obligation to remember is inscribed on every Holocaust memorial, but even the words "Never Forget" become irksome eventually.
  • (9) The pathophysiology of this frequent and irksome complication is still poorly understood.
  • (10) They owe me a medal for trying to save the Russian environment," he said, "The amnesty is just a way for the authorities to save face but we are still described as violent criminals that the Duma, in its magnanimity, is willing to pardon, which is really irksome."
  • (11) In a letter to the prime minister, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that tighter controls on British newspapers would send the wrong message to repressive regimes that want to "rein in irksome reporters".
  • (12) It may also say something about modern debate that the most teeth-grinding aspect of Osborne's move barely attracted comment – but the spectacle of an alumnus of St Paul's School worth an estimated £4m kicking the poor in order to preserve his political skin is irksome, to say the least.
  • (13) It’s not like Thailand today.” Harking back to an idealised past, when irksome democracy was containable and everyone knew their place, is one of the festival’s aims.
  • (14) When the increasingly irksome backbench rebel Barry Sheerman put in a good 10 minutes on the BBC News Channel, did he not realise the absurdity of his failure to mention a single substantial item of policy?
  • (15) For Campbell, the justification of the cost is almost as irksome as the outlay itself.
  • (16) Assessment of completeness of vagotomy has always been an irksome and time-consuming affair.
  • (17) There is a spread sheet that will tell you what everyone should be doing for every hour over Christmas, from who is doing the driving, through seating plans, to thank-you letters (you have to write down who the last present was from before you are allowed to open the next one – very irksome for The Twins).
  • (18) This shunts the cost from one government department to another, with the irksome side-effect that the cost is much greater.
  • (19) Our cause was noble, he submits: we were fighting for European freedom against irksomely expansionist Teutonic tyranny.
  • (20) Almost as irksome has been a £440,000 cash allowance – separate from Bailey's £1.1m salary and potential £2.2m bonus – plus an additional one-off performance related award of £7.6m worth of shares when he took over as chief executive in May.

Meddlesome


Definition:

  • (a.) Given to meddling; apt to interpose in the affairs of others; officiously intrusive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Then I was seen as someone who, when she was in power, didn’t want anything to do with them.” She was portrayed as meddlesome and pushy, with an undue influence on both Hollande’s policies and his wardrobe.
  • (2) What worries me is that all this meddlesome injunctioneering could soon threaten the fabric of reason itself, causing a black hole of logic that sucks everything in the universe through to neverwhere.
  • (3) In a memorable exchange, Senator Angus King of Maine asked: “When a president of the United States in the Oval Office says something like ‘I hope’ or ‘I suggest’ or ‘would you,’ do you take that as a directive?” Comey replied: “Yes, it rings in my ear as kind of, ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’” – a reference to King Henry’s II’s kiss of death to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket.
  • (4) Professionals, unionised workers and meddlesome politicians need to stand aside and allow the system to become rational, transaction-oriented and incentivised.
  • (5) Their fathers tended to be away from home, and mothers were conspicuously overprotective and meddlesome.
  • (6) Even when David Cameron swore he would not introduce "any more meddlesome top-down restructuring" he pushed through another.
  • (7) He dumped Every Child Matters: it was, he noted in February 2012, "meddlesome".
  • (8) No one could be accused of "meddlesome" intervention in the life of Daniel Pelka.
  • (9) The size of the hammer taken to Defra revealed more about the government’s approach than simply its antipathy to the meddlesome pursuit of environmental protection.
  • (10) 1 example of "meddlesome medicine" is the widespread use of "therapeutic abortion."
  • (11) While this sort of front office juggling and decision-making waffling isn't entirely uncommon and not really too newsworthy, Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix reported details that made Pera's recent behavior as being less meddlesome and more just flat out eccentric : • Pera wanted more influence in deciding the playing time for certain players, particularly fourth-year power forward Ed Davis.
  • (12) Simon Callow stars as Godfrey, the mischievously meddlesome narrator, while Enfield plays a sinister creep who seduces grieving widows, via tip-offs from a corrupt undertaker, in order to steal their life's savings.
  • (13) Minor surgery is usually meddlesome and often followed by local recurrence which is hard to control.
  • (14) At 64 years of age, the lazy and meddlesome Cloquet stopped operating and writing.
  • (15) Laparotomy is unnecessary and potentially meddlesome.
  • (16) It's a useful reminder, if one were needed, that there's no technique too mendacious, too meddlesome or too unpleasant for people who think other woman's reproductive organs are de facto their business.