What's the difference between irreverence and reverence?

Irreverence


Definition:

  • (n.) The state or quality of being irreverent; want of proper reverence; disregard of the authority and character of a superior.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This country has had a free press for the last 300 years, that has been irreverent and rude as my website is and holding public officials to account.
  • (2) Animal Practice is a Universal Television production based on an irreverent New York veterinarian, played by Justin Kirk of Weeds and Angels in America.
  • (3) There has been much pointing-and-chortling of late at the Daily Mail's embarrassing failure to stoke national outrage over a mildly irreverent comment about the Queen's sex life blurted out by Jack Whitehall on a festive panel show.
  • (4) One irreverent Australian columnist has suggested that the "Lizard of Oz" may now be more fitting, given that the Aboriginal meaning for Kadina, the country town north of Adelaide where Crosby grew up, is "Lizard Plain".
  • (5) He showed an irreverence for the lives of the great composers that sometimes came in for criticism.
  • (6) Ian Hislop, the long-serving editor, had a suitably topical and irreverent take on the vicissitudes of the magazine's circulation.
  • (7) The required skill of comedians-turned-presenters is to seem irreverent while rocking no boats.
  • (8) In our own time, Brooke has become the haunting symbol of a doomed generation, flitting across the pages of novels by Alan Hollinghurst and AS Byatt like a volatile and irreverent Peter Pan.
  • (9) Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman described Entwistle as "clever, erudite, a man, critically, who reads books, a man with a sense of humour and a great degree of irreverence, not least about the BBC.
  • (10) He could often be seen eating spicy lamb chops at his favourite curry houses, flattering local businessmen and speaking irreverently about parliamentary colleagues.
  • (11) He achieved a succession of scoops, and was largely responsible for training up a generation of gifted young journalists, notably the irreverent gossip columnist, Nigel Dempster ...
  • (12) But, unlike the supine press so common abroad, they still have the irreverent vigour and diversity of a true political safeguard.
  • (13) "I love that a country capable of extraordinary pomp and ceremony can still retain a spiky irreverence towards its establishment.
  • (14) Hall might be a scion of one of Britain's most important theatrical dynasties (his father is Peter, his half-sister Rebecca), but the cocky irreverence of his productions showed he had every intention of making his own mark.
  • (15) "The culture of protest needs to develop," one of the members of Pussy Riot said last month, and indeed as much as the band represent a form of protest in Russia, they also embody a shift in culture that echoes the DIY culture that flourished in the Seattle and Olympia areas of Washington in the early 90s – fanzines, garage punk bands, a tone of wild irreverence and a wish to question tradition.
  • (16) Jordan’s al-Hudoud, a bundle of irreverent online fun, recently ran a delightful story about the arrest of Father Christmas and the confiscation of presents he was distributing.
  • (17) Because they seemed to represent the best of journalistic virtues – courage, campaigning, toughness, compassion, humour, irreverence; a serious engagement with serious things; a sense of fairness; an eye for injustice; a passion for explaining; knowing how to achieve impact; a connection with readers.
  • (18) Many Muscovites were happy enough to see a tough response to the band's irreverent act of rebellion, which was aimed at President Vladimir Putin .
  • (19) I mean merely to josh, not to be blatantly irreverent, for who would seriously argue that Roth's career is not worthy of celebration?
  • (20) Catch-22 was an irreverent, savage and cruel satire.

Reverence


Definition:

  • (n.) Profound respect and esteem mingled with fear and affection, as for a holy being or place; the disposition to revere; veneration.
  • (n.) The act of revering; a token of respect or veneration; an obeisance.
  • (n.) That which deserves or exacts manifestations of reverence; reverend character; dignity; state.
  • (n.) A person entitled to be revered; -- a title applied to priests or other ministers with the pronouns his or your; sometimes poetically to a father.
  • (v. t.) To regard or treat with reverence; to regard with respect and affection mingled with fear; to venerate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) She followed that with a job at Bibendum – she still talks of Simon Hopkinson, "such an elegant cook, so particular and clean and efficient", with deep reverence – and another at Roscoff in Northern Ireland.
  • (2) Many have called for the return of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Buddhist leader revered by many Tibetans.
  • (3) It is a waste of taxpayer’s money.” A third critic wrote: “What China’s National Football Team gives its fans is decades of consistent disappointment.” Some disillusioned fans called for Team China’s manager, Gao Hongbo, to be sacked and replaced with Lang Ping, the revered coach of China’s female volleyball team.
  • (4) Compaoré was 36 when he seized power in a coup in which Thomas Sankara, his former friend and one of Africa’s most revered leaders, was ousted and assassinated.
  • (5) We intend to treat claims from the most powerful factions with skepticism, not reverence.
  • (6) King notes with some amusement that he has been around so long that kids who read and loved him in the 1970s now run publishing houses and newspapers; he is revered, these days, as a grand old man of American letters.
  • (7) Four explosions hit the southern Damascus district of Sayeda Zeinab, where a revered Shia shrine is located, leaving 62 dead and 180 injured, according to the Observatory.
  • (8) Where we revere and anthropomorphise such brutal predators as sharks, tigers and bears, we view these tiny ectoparasites as worthless, an evolutionary accident with no redeeming or adorable characteristics.
  • (9) Where other titans became “Old Farts” overnight – “ No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1977” as the Clash had it – Bowie stayed revered.
  • (10) It is hard to explain the significance of the man to those who may not have been born at the time or informed of the freedom struggle, or born witness to his dignity, pride, humility and moral authority, but I and so many others revered him as a father and cherished his existence as a living secular saint.
  • (11) It is the England that then prime minister John Major vowed would never vanish in a famous 1993 speech: “Long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’.” Major was mining Orwell’s wartime essay The Lion and the Unicorn, whose tone was one of reassurance – the national culture will survive, despite everything: “The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies.” Orwell and Major were both asserting the strength of a national culture at times when Britishness – for both men basically Englishness – was felt to be under threat from outside dangers (war, integration into Europe).
  • (12) But many of the MEK's American supporters speak of the organisation almost with a reverence.
  • (13) Up to half a million wolves once roamed across America , living in harmony with native Americans who revered them for supposed healing powers.
  • (14) Others are alarmed at the almost cult-like reverence that has built up around Buhari.
  • (15) Qhorin Halfhand is revered for his ability to live deep into Wildling territory for years on end.
  • (16) He inspired that odd mixture of reverence and resentment that we now associate with celebrity, a phenomenon wrongly thought modern.
  • (17) Oscar Tabárez's side may not play with the same flair and commitment to attack, but Luis Suárez demonstrated here why he is so revered and the draw has been as inviting for La Celeste as they could possibly have dared hope.
  • (18) As for potatoes, we're supposed to treat them with a reverence previously reserved for fine wine and caviar.
  • (19) It sounds like Michael Gove's worst nightmare, a country where some combination of teachers' union leaders and trendy academics, "valuing Marxism, revering jargon and fighting excellence" (to use the education secretary's words), have taken over the asylum.
  • (20) It's one thing for critics and curators to single out the next rising star from China, expecting hushed reverence from the general public, but quite another for us to genuinely engage with the art of China past and present.