What's the difference between merciful and vengeful?

Merciful


Definition:

  • (a.) Full of mercy; having or exercising mercy; disposed to pity and spare offenders; unwilling to punish.
  • (a.) Unwilling to give pain; compassionate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The law and justice minister, Anisul Huq, said the 73-year-old leader was hanged after he refused to seek mercy from the country’s president.
  • (2) But if May rushes headlong into a panicked triggering of article 50 without a clear idea of what she wants out of negotiations, she will have left us at the mercy of 27 countries who have heard little but table-thumping and empty threats from ministers.
  • (3) He called for care for the environment to be added to the seven spiritual works of mercy outlined in the Gospel that the faithful are asked to perform throughout the pope’s year of mercy in 2016.
  • (4) But Ruby Tweedie, another local resident, said: "There have been so many doubts about his guilt that it's only fair that the man, who has only a few months to live, should be shown mercy."
  • (5) Constant ribbing about his private life was compromising Deayton's position as the show's "holier-than-thou" host, who showed no mercy towards politicians or celebrities caught in a similar position, the corporation added.
  • (6) The 70-year-old describes a life of comfortable detachment from mainstream society, but with long periods in which he and his 74-year-old wife, Shin-yeol, are at the mercy of the elements.
  • (7) We're kind of at Mother Nature's mercy at this point," said Tom Kruschke, another fire department spokesman .
  • (8) Without him, we were at the mercy of increasingly nervous investors, and our Hollywood film-making future hung in the balance.
  • (9) Students of privatisation over the years have learnt to be grateful for small mercies.
  • (10) The mayor is a good person, but no one invited him, certainly not officially … The pope was furious.” While the prank provided fodder to critics of the mayor, it also underscored a more serious issue between the Vatican and Rome just a few months ahead of the church’s jubilee year of mercy, which begins on 8 December.
  • (11) The only mercy was they would have known little about it.
  • (12) After Hollande spent two hours on French radio in a patent relaunch of his presidency, a film producer announced that a biopic of Trierweiler’s revenge memoir, Merci Pour Ce Moment (Thank You For This Moment), is now in the works.
  • (13) Hunt replied: "Merci hopefully when consultation over we can have coffee like old days!"
  • (14) "The legal system has lost all sense of mercy and justice and it has been replaced with punitiveness and vindictiveness," Stinebrickner-Kauffman told Mail Online .
  • (15) If Whittingdale had any honour, any mercy, and any basic human decency, he would murder David Attenborough himself today, in his bed, to spare him any further suffering.
  • (16) It was not something that was talked about.” Thomson added: “It was mercifully quick and I remember first of all feeling surprise, then fear, then horror as I realised I quite simply couldn’t escape – because he was stronger than me, and there was no sense even initially of any sexual desire from him, which I suppose, looking back, again I find odd.” The MP said she had felt “absolutely numbed” and ashamed but told no one about the incident.
  • (17) Several survivors and family members of the victims who were flown to the US testified this week , and one cursed Bales for attacking villagers as some slept and others screamed for mercy.
  • (18) This meant that if the rebels started abusing people, the Misca would withdraw, leaving the civilian population at their mercy.
  • (19) Sitting in a side street listening to the sound of loud blasts and gunfire emanating from Nariman House, Rakash Bhaud, the local leader of the far-right Hindu party Shiv Sena, blamed the central government for the failures that, he said, had left them at the mercy of Pakistan-backed terrorists.
  • (20) More emphasis on mercy is needed in this case, surely, and less on killing.

Vengeful


Definition:

  • (a.) Vindictive; retributive; revengeful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On hearing the Rolf Harris verdicts, I felt vengeful, like many, I expect – condemning this man who led the public a merry dance and enjoyed enormous success while perpetrating abuse.
  • (2) If he was a cartoon character, he’d be … Mourinho was definitely the Grinch – ill-tempered, vengeful, unable to moderate what came out of his mouth, but also sometimes charming and hilariously funny.
  • (3) Thankfully, there is no sign so far of another Oswald Mosley, and the British National party performed poorly in the election, but Gray detects some of the hallmarks of populism – "a diffuse sense of grievance directed at the political class" and "an indeterminate, unlimited hope" – in the 2008 election of the unqualified Boris Johnson as mayor of London, in the carelessly vengeful mood of many voters after the MPs' expenses scandal, and in the three-week wonder of Cleggmania.
  • (4) Whatever else Valérie Trierweiler has been portrayed as – vengeful harpy, ambitious meddler, undignified ex – she is also a woman who has had her heart broken.
  • (5) Individuals "associated with the opposition" had used an FM radio station to broadcast hate speech, even urging "men from one community to commit vengeful sexual violence against women from another community", it said.
  • (6) Either he says "mea culpa" and resigns, almost certainly precipitating a general election; or he condemns the ledgers as fabrications, the work of a vengeful Bárcenas angry about taking the fall for a practice that allegedly all were party to.
  • (7) After much online rancour, Pelevina agreed she would not stand in the elections, but wrote on Facebook that Yashin was a “simple liar, petty and vengeful, and simply an indecent person”.
  • (8) Hopefully it takes more than a throwing knife hurled by a vengeful sexagenarian to take him down.
  • (9) Labour strategists also hope that by postponing the bulk of the pain until April 2010 or the year after, the voters will not be too vengeful in the spring.
  • (10) Perhaps the culprit was skiving off the wedding of a despised but vengeful cousin when he posted.
  • (11) What’s much more questionable is the way the same vengeful attitude is extended to anyone who ever portrayed the last two years of Labour politics in terms of doubt, concern and malaise, and who are being similarly instructed to say sorry for their alleged heresy or be escorted from the building.
  • (12) Acts of intimacy and frail hope in a vortex out there, of mad politics and distant wars come vengefully home to claim those who had simply gone about their lives.
  • (13) Fast forward 10 years and a vengeful ghost of the victim returns to haunt the Iceland manager, who has, rather unusually, become the county's prime minister.
  • (14) The Egyptian blogger, Zeinobia, argued that the attack “will generate more anger and we will have more vengeful actions from the regime, which already did not waste any time in the past [in terms of increasing] oppression and fighting freedoms in the name of counter-terrorism”.
  • (15) "Instead of chasing tax evaders they are chasing me," said Vaxevanis, who had described his original trial as "targeted and vengeful".
  • (16) The vengeful allies after the First World War tried initially to demand Germany pay reparations on that scale, atoning for millions of dead in the trenches, before more than halving their demands.
  • (17) One woman looked her in the eye and described how she lost her sons, aged 12 and nine, when they were unlawfully killed by her vengeful ex-husband in a house fire in which he also died.
  • (18) For the last few months, in preparation for a radio documentary, I've been talking to Comfort's friends and relations and reading through the immense body of work that now lies in the shadow of The Joy of Sex – the poetry that ensured he was spoken of in the same breath as Auden and Spender; the drama about the mine-workers forced to dig a toxic element that irradiates their bones and turns them into vengeful monsters; the pamphlets arguing that peace in the atomic age can only be secured through public disobedience.
  • (19) Trierweiler was seen as a vengeful second wife, staking out her territory.
  • (20) That it is impossible to imagine her successors going in for comparable sharing only underlines, on the other hand, how rapidly the royal family restored its factory settings – absorbing, along the way, the woman who prompted Diana into vengeful activity.