What's the difference between misery and torment?

Misery


Definition:

  • (n.) Great unhappiness; extreme pain of body or mind; wretchedness; distress; woe.
  • (n.) Cause of misery; calamity; misfortune.
  • (n.) Covetousness; niggardliness; avarice.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Northern Ireland will not be dragged back by terrorists who have nothing but misery to offer."
  • (2) The Coalition promises to add more misery to their lives.
  • (3) I thought she had been put out of her misery by marriage but now she is a widow.
  • (4) This is not some sophisticated, Westminstery battle, but a life-and-death, misery-or-decency choice about the very basics of life for hundreds of thousands of older British people.
  • (5) "While the country is sunk in misery, families are ruined and children are growing up in poverty, this guy turns up and we pay €91m for him.
  • (6) It is only going to cause more disruption and misery for passengers.
  • (7) An arms embargo should be imposed on Israel, the former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell has said , as he warned that the level of misery and carnage in Gaza was likely to poison the remaining goodwill in the region for generations.
  • (8) In Kew Gardens, west London, 18mm of rain fell in just an hour on Saturday afternoon with other deluges causing travel misery.
  • (9) So, in The Devil Wears Prada , the ferocious magazine chief played by Meryl Streep is beset by secret misery: unfaithful husband, tricky kids, wig issues.
  • (10) He skirted round the issue of historic responsibility for the misery but referred to the sheer scale of the sacrifice, pointing out that, among more than 14,000 parishes in the whole of England and Wales, only about 50 so-called "thankful parishes" saw all their soldiers return.
  • (11) Spanish football fans’ habit of waving white hankies tends to be derisive, signifying that they wish a hapless manager to be put out of their club’s misery.
  • (12) Above all, MPs should vote to stop needless misery for families afflicted by this rare but terrible disorder.
  • (13) At the same time, by achieving a state of misery through following her mother's orders, she exposed her as ridiculous, and thus covertly discharged considerable aggression.
  • (14) Labour are finally crafting a clearer line on Brexit: this morning, the shadow chancellor warned that “losing access to the single market would be devastating for jobs, livelihoods and our public services”, that Britain didn’t vote for “economic misery and the loss of jobs”, and that the government was “abandoning Britain’s clear national interests by putting narrow party political concerns first.” These are good lines – and clarify that Labour’s priority is single-market access – but they will only cut through if repeated in similar language until people can hardly bear to hear them anymore.
  • (15) Behind the chancellor, Tories kept up a wall of noise, laughing and jeering at the misery guts on the benches opposite.
  • (16) Oxygen supply by this route, however, may enable the inner ear tissue alive even in misery perfusion and recover the high tone potential as a therapy of otitis media with effusion.
  • (17) It wasn’t too long ago that I was sitting inside a tent with newfound friends, fasting on the National Mall and feeling a profound hunger – literally, yes, but also a hunger within, to see an end to the misery endured by those who come to our country to escape poverty and violence in search of a bright future for their families.
  • (18) Forty percent of An-ICH were treated conservatively and the outcome was very misery (no useful life and 94% was poor or dead).
  • (19) Most human misery can be blamed on failed relationships and physical and mental illness rather than money problems and poverty, according to a landmark study by a team of researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE).
  • (20) While a US presidential visit would normally be expected to command the lion's share of attention in South Korea, the country remains preoccupied with the misery wrought by the sinking of the passenger ferry.

Torment


Definition:

  • (n.) An engine for casting stones.
  • (n.) Extreme pain; anguish; torture; the utmost degree of misery, either of body or mind.
  • (n.) That which gives pain, vexation, or misery.
  • (v. t.) To put to extreme pain or anguish; to inflict excruciating misery upon, either of body or mind; to torture.
  • (v. t.) To pain; to distress; to afflict.
  • (v. t.) To tease; to vex; to harass; as, to be tormented with importunities, or with petty annoyances.
  • (v. t.) To put into great agitation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Her story is an incredible tale of triumph over tragedy: a tormented childhood during China's Cultural Revolution, detention and forced exile after exposing female infanticide – then glittering success as the head of a major US technology firm.
  • (2) "It is difficult to imagine the torment experienced by the vulnerable victims of crimes such as these.
  • (3) While his citizens were being beaten and tormented in illegal detention, spokesmen for the then prime minister, Tony Blair, declared: "The Italian police had a difficult job to do.
  • (4) Yet the removal of two in-form goalscorers who were tormenting West Ham – first Aaron Lennon and then Lukaku – afforded the visitors the initiative.
  • (5) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
  • (6) Corner to USA though... 1.33am BST 20 mins More tempo in the American play now, but Belgium intercept again, and Mirallas torments them down the Belgian right flank before hitting a low cross in that's hoofed safely clear.
  • (7) It cannot be right that anyone who has found the courage to escape their abusive or violent partner should be subjected to the stress and torment of being confronted and interrogated by them in any court.” Research by charity Women’s Aid suggests a quarter of women in family court proceedings have been cross-examined by an abusive former partner.
  • (8) Shin Dong-hyuk said he was tormented to see his father alive and speaking in the video released by Pyongyang in October.
  • (9) In a torment of frustration, Mohammed stood outside the governor's and threw a can of petrol over himself.
  • (10) More than a quarter of hospital beds are occupied by people with dementia (no surprise to anyone who has been in hospital recently, where wards are full of men and women in great anxiety and torment) and they tend to stay for longer-than-average periods of time.
  • (11) Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island whose bipartisan bill will ensure a three-month extension of the federal benefits program, told the Guardian the measure would stimulate the economy and alleviate what he called the “mental torment” suffered by those long-term unemployed who now feel abandoned.
  • (12) It was only his inflexible determination, the quality that had made him a great general, that mastered the torments of ill-health – sleepless nights, fear of dying – to articulate his account for a devoted American audience.
  • (13) The man who devised these torments has a passing resemblance to El Greco's emaciated saints.
  • (14) Arsenal had no riposte to the blue and white striped waves that tormented them all evening.
  • (15) Father Michael, so brilliantly played by Sean Bean , was tormented by one such moment: his decision not to answer the phone to Helen Oyenusi (Muna Otaru) when she called to ask that he calm down her son.
  • (16) Suárez played as through affronted by the suggestion he might have fitness issues, tormenting England’s defence on a night that finished as a personal ordeal for Steven Gerrard.
  • (17) So often did John torment his elder brother – because, grouchy alcoholic prick that he was, he hated to acknowledge a debt – one has to wonder if he cast Francis in a minor part in Young Mr Lincoln simply to let him witness, day after day, his own signature role being forever obliterated by Henry Fonda's entrancing new reading.
  • (18) Shawcross, however, maintains there was no bad intent and said for that reason he has not been tormenting himself about the moment he collided with Ramsey's right leg and left the teenager writhing in agony.
  • (19) Since his withdrawal from the music scene, Shields has earned a reputation as the latter-day Brian Wilson, a tormented genius unable to produce a successor to Loveless, the Pet Sounds of UK avant-rock.
  • (20) Adding to the torment for Rodgers was a 120-minute performance before hosting Manchester City in the Premier League on Sunday at noon.