What's the difference between irreverent and sardonic?

Irreverent


Definition:

  • (a.) Not reverent; showing a want of reverence; expressive of a want of veneration; as, an irreverent babbler; an irreverent jest.

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.

Sardonic


Definition:

  • (a.) Forced; unnatural; insincere; hence, derisive, mocking, malignant, or bitterly sarcastic; -- applied only to a laugh, smile, or some facial semblance of gayety.
  • (a.) Of, pertaining to, or resembling, a kind of linen made at Colchis.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It’s a sardonic but good-natured account of being non-white in modern Australia.
  • (2) Harrison Ford (Han Solo) had had a small part in George Lucas's American Grafitti, but was working as a carpenter when he was cast as the sardonic space smuggler, and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) had appeared briefly in the 1975 Warren Beatty comedy Shampoo.
  • (3) In the digital era, Hill and his team can sample and sardonically alter material in the week it is transmitted.
  • (4) People talk the same way about Angela Chase, the sardonic and sentimental heroine of My So-Called Life , the teen TV series that began Danes's career in 1994.
  • (5) The king sardonically replies that it would in fact make people merely acquire the appearance of wisdom, and that it would make them forgetful of how to remember.
  • (6) Entertainment Weekly later reported that sardonic space smuggler Solo and bounty hunter Fett would also get their own films, and there have also been hints that Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine could return.
  • (7) Han definitely shoots first (and asks questions later) Lucas and fans have debated for decades whether the sardonic space scoundrel was originally intended to shoot bounty hunter Greedo only after the alien fired his blaster first in the Mos Eisley Cantina in 1977’s saga opener A New Hope, but Abrams clearly has no such qualms about showing the elder Solo as a quick-on-the-draw kind of guy.
  • (8) The Han Solo film will reportedly portray a younger version of the sardonic space smuggler, and will be set in the period between 2005 prequel movie Revenge of the Sith and the film that introduced the character, 1977's Star Wars .
  • (9) The Daily Mail wondered sardonically last week what they talked about over breakfast.
  • (10) I don’t know where they will find a place for the replay, maybe in a morning when we play in an afternoon,” said the sardonic Liverpool manager following his team’s ninth game in 29 days.
  • (11) The Oscar-winning Welsh actor has joined a cast that already includes Toby Jones and Bill Nighy in the lead roles of pompous Captain Mainwaring and his sardonic second-in-command Sergeant Wilson, the roles made famous by Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier in Jimmy Perry and David Croft’s original TV show.
  • (12) 3.26pm GMT A rather sardonic take on Chris Smith’s announcement that the dredging of the Somerset levels should start.
  • (13) One sardonic comment on Twitter summed up the widespread reaction: " There are no black men in Plymouth ," observed Chris Terry.
  • (14) Sardonic recoil against them (as in Shem's novel House of God) by residents--a professionally sanctioned response, deflecting what might otherwise be unendurable demands on their varied quotas of pity.
  • (15) "Well," a sudden, sardonic smile, "it is, but with enormous amounts of irony.
  • (16) A younger version of Solo will instead return in a new spin-off , tipped to appear in 2018, with Dave Franco, Logan Lerman and Scott Eastwood reportedly among the frontrunners to play the sardonic space scoundrel.
  • (17) While Jimmy Kimmel’s success is built on his sardonic wit, Corden doesn’t seem to have a cynical bone in his body.
  • (18) Felipe Gonzalez, the former Spanish social democratic prime minister, remarked sardonically the other day that when he was a lad Franco claimed his was the Third Way between capitalism and communism(4).
  • (19) Harrison Ford has confirmed for the first time that he expects to return as sardonic space smuggler Han Solo in Disney's forthcoming new Star Wars film.
  • (20) Mark of Cain, that is,” he said, in his aggressively sardonic Stirling-accented way.