What's the difference between merciless and pitiless?

Merciless


Definition:

  • (a.) Destitute of mercy; cruel; unsparing; -- said of animate beings, and also, figuratively, of things; as, a merciless tyrant; merciless waves.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Sri Lanka mounted a merciless final assault on the Tamil Tiger insurgency in 2009 .
  • (2) And up there, looming over it all is Zynga, social gaming's Ming the Merciless.
  • (3) He attacked, battened down the hatches on his serve and was merciless in the tie-break, levelling the match with a well-placed volley.
  • (4) Pyongyang reacted angrily when The Interview’s plot first became public and promised a “resolute and merciless” response if it went ahead.
  • (5) Where we already have the electoral numbers, our political vengeance has been merciless against the GOP; witness California after its electoral dalliance with anti-immigrant policies or Mitt Romney’s disastrous 2012 campaign .
  • (6) Gerrard had been mercilessly taunted again by Chelsea’s supporters and he had played as if determined to turn the volume down.
  • (7) But, despite such incidents, many will see the latest episode as some sort of karmic revenge for Letterman's often merciless take on the moral lapses of others.
  • (8) The Stoke supporters mercilessly booed the Welshman’s every touch, presumably for his reluctance to accept Ryan Shawcross’ apology for breaking his leg at the Britannia Stadium six years ago, and there was also some unsavoury and shameful chanting by a section of the home fans, who sang: “Aaron Ramsey, he walks with a limp”.
  • (9) Celeb bombed, and the critics were merciless, so I had wondered if that was why Enfield withdrew from our screens.
  • (10) It was the fasting month of Ramadan and as mercilessly hot as a desert city in high summer could be.
  • (11) Like some of those R-rated comedies that go down very well in the States, they don’t work here and don’t get released.” The Interview stars Rogen and James Franco as two journalists charged with carrying out the killing of Kim Jong-un, a storyline which prompted North Korean officials to complain to the United Nations in July and prompted state media warnings of “merciless retaliation”.
  • (12) With international lenders at the EU and IMF demanding that Athens step up its austerity drive - or risk losing the funding that is keeping its debt-stricken economy afloat -- President Carolos Papoulias told the visiting delegation: "Up until now, we've been receiving a merciless lashing.
  • (13) I’m afraid you’ve lost my trust.” HSBC chiefs face Margaret Hodge at her most merciless Read more She went on: “I really do think that you should consider your position and you should think about resigning and if not, I think the government should sack you.” Fairhead has been a non-executive director of HSBC since 2004, and was made the chair of the audit and risk committee – which bore responsibility for governance and compliance across the global bank – in May 2007.
  • (14) Always a contrived fiction, this sequence juxtaposes a poignant fantasy of a fully fit presenter with the merciless world of hard news.
  • (15) Remember those embarrassing bills for wisteria clearance at the young Conservative leader’s home amid the expenses debacle of 2009, and how these were lopped away by a merciless assault on the more shameless claims of various knights of the shire?
  • (16) Not even the cameras from the media that were capturing the unfolding scene were enough to deter the circus owner from pulling a gun and mercilessly beating us.
  • (17) Sheng Keyi , meanwhile, turns a mercilessly ironic eye on modern Chinese life, particularly the difficulties faced by women in a hypersexualised culture and the insecure economic life of migrant workers.
  • (18) The brief flurry of liberal street protest in 2011 and 2012 was ruthlessly snuffed out by the Kremlin, and many have suggested that, far from a liberal revolution, the most likely revolt in Russia is the “senseless and merciless” Russian uprising of which Alexander Pushkin wrote.
  • (19) In the 13th century the Cathars put up a strong defence of their beliefs and territory against the merciless persecution meted out by the Albigensian crusade.
  • (20) It’s happening to Christians now right across the Middle East and Africa, and the dangers of not speaking up have been made clear since the Paris attacks, when innocent people were gunned down mercilessly while shopping for food for the Shabbat [Jewish Sabbath].

Pitiless


Definition:

  • (a.) Destitute of pity; hard-hearted; merciless; as, a pitilessmaster; pitiless elements.
  • (a.) Exciting no pity; as, a pitiless condition.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They fit with his continuation of the regime’s systemic human rights abuses, its pitiless prison labour camp system including enslavement, forced abortions and systemic rape, its abductions and foreign hostage-taking, and its aggressive defiance of its neighbours.
  • (2) The judge began sentencing for the "sickening and pitiless" attack by saying that Adebolajo and Adebowale were converts to Islam who became radicalised and extremists.
  • (3) A grand and sombre staircase - dark, looming, pitiless - leads up from the Axes to the exhibits, allowing Libeskind to play one last trick on the visitor by luring him up a final flight that goes nowhere, before his voice gives way to the memoranda of Jewish history.
  • (4) As Bellfield refused to come to the court from his prison cell, judge Mr Justice Wilkie described him as a "cruel and pitiless killer" who had "not had the courage to come into court to face his victims and receive his sentence".
  • (5) The pitiless tone of social media has made this sort of exercise even harder to manage than before.
  • (6) Levi Bellfield refused to leave his prison cell to hear Mr Justice Wilkie sentence him to life without parole and condemn him as a "cruel and pitiless killer".
  • (7) She’s pitiless with him, even with the polite hat doffing on managing the global financial crisis and projecting Australian interests through the G20.
  • (8) How does she survive on a pittance in that pitiless pandemonium?
  • (9) Your sickening and pitiless conduct was in stark contrast to the compassion and bravery shown by the various women at the scene who tended to Lee Rigby's body and who challenged what you had done and said.
  • (10) He added: "He is marked out as a cruel and pitiless killer."
  • (11) These stories are cut-glass beauties, pitiless and hard-edged and constantly poking fun at the pretensions of the middle and upper classes.
  • (12) Earlier the judge who sentenced "cruel and pitiless" Bellfield to life for her murder and kidnap dismissed the jury, which was still deliberating on allegations that Bellfield had tried to abduct another girl, Rachel Cowles, then 11, the day before Milly vanished.
  • (13) The most recent synopsis for The Hateful Eight suggests the film “follows the steadily ratcheting tension that develops after a blizzard diverts a stagecoach from its route, and traps a pitiless and mistrustful group which includes a competing pair of bounty hunters, a renegade Confederate soldier, and a female prisoner in a saloon in the middle of nowhere”.
  • (14) To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror.
  • (15) In the article, for French magazine L’Obs, the correspondent suggested China’s “pitiless repression” of the Uighurs was to blame for a tide of deadly violence around the country, including bomb and knife attacks on civilians.
  • (16) The towering historian of the left EP Thompson agreed with him, and conjured a pitiless elite of aristocratic Whigs, unrelenting in the exhibition of authority.
  • (17) A brilliantly learned man with a pitiless mind and a kind eye.
  • (18) Pallas Athena, the Greek god of wisdom, becomes, in Klimt's painting of her, a shining warrior with pitiless eyes: wisdom frozen into dogma.
  • (19) "Everywhere the same hard, grim, pitiless sign of battle and war.
  • (20) The environment of a group such as Islamic State, created around a cult of extreme violence and a worldview that dehumanises all outside the organisation, can quickly turn an individual from a misguided insurgent into a pitiless terrorist killer, more than happy to execute a defenceless hostage with a knife, on camera.

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