What's the difference between mortifying and vexing?

Mortifying


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Mortify
  • (a.) Tending to mortify; affected by, or having symptoms of, mortification; as, a mortifying wound; mortifying flesh.
  • (a.) Subduing the appetites, desires, etc.; as, mortifying penances.
  • (a.) Tending to humble or abase; humiliating; as, a mortifying repulse.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) she shudders – she has declined all reality TV invitations, and the closest she has ever come to a wardrobe malfunction was a minor ding-dong over some exposed thigh once while presenting Crimewatch, about which she was mortified.
  • (2) EPA Gazza’s Italia 90 tears were but a trickling tributary compared with the Amazon of anguish unleashed by the shell-shocked hosts during their mortifying 7-1 loss to Germany.
  • (3) Karen Harding later described herself as “mortified”.
  • (4) He added that the situation was equally bad for his two sons, who were mortified by the pictures published in the News of the World.
  • (5) I don't use my kids' real names on my blog and I try to avoid writing anything that would have mortified me growing up, but might they resent me later?
  • (6) Farage prefaced his comments with a prediction that he was sure the other leaders would be “mortified that I dare to even talk about it”.
  • (7) He is toughest of all on himself: nearly 50 years on he is still mortified by his rhyming of "woman" with "human" in a song that got yanked from Anyone Can Whistle .
  • (8) "A mortifying and appalling experience," said one, while another fan posted on the standup's Facebook page: "Absolutely awful.
  • (9) Smith replied: “It has been the most mortifying experience for me in this contest to have been painted as sexist, because it’s the last thing I am.
  • (10) It was mortifying, actually.” “But you decided to play into it?” I ask her.
  • (11) They’d be mortified if they were caught doing that to LGBT people or Muslims.
  • (12) The presenter apologised and said he was "mortified" by the accusation .
  • (13) After one particularly mortifying Saturday afternoon when she saw me in the Wimpy with – the horror of it all!
  • (14) The story of his life mortified him and sent him scurrying for excuses.
  • (15) My hope is that the government of Sheikh Hasina might actually be mortified by this letter.” Bangladesh must act on these brutal attacks on bloggers | Letters Read more The letter comes after the blogger Ananta Bijoy Das was hacked to death last week on a crowded street in Sylhet , Bangladesh’s fifth-largest city.
  • (16) I have plenty of Labour-voting friends who are happy to cheer Venezuelan nationalism, but who would be mortified to be called British nationalists.
  • (17) Read it as a teenager and you wince for poor mortified Lizzie and Jane, thinking perhaps of times when our own mother said the wrong thing.
  • (18) He added: "I am mortified to have done this, because it breaches the most basic ethical rule: don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you.
  • (19) I’d be mortified if Boris Johnson was made leader of the Tory party, because it will say something profoundly awful about British politics.” “I think he is a showman, and an effective class clown if you like, but the class clown tends to be disruptive, as I think he would be if he had the chance to put his silly views into practice.” The Conservative former chancellor Norman Lamont also came to Johnson’s defence, saying it was a “fact there were fascist theorists who believed very strongly in a united Europe”.
  • (20) When Aston Pride ended this March, local people were mortified at receiving no recognition, not even a junior official from Eric Pickles's Department for Communities to visit, or a letter of praise for being the top NDC after all those years of giving so much and overcoming such obstacles.

Vexing


Definition:

  • (p. pr. & vb. n.) of Vex

Example Sentences:

  • (1) De Boer's successor's first tasks will be to keep the US aboard the negotiations and to clear up the vexed question of the legal status of the Copenhagen accord , the deal struck at Copenhagen by a small group but not endorsed by a majority of countries.
  • (2) There is also the vexed question of what should be the legal form of any Paris agreement, a subject likely to keep negotiators up late into the night at the conference, and some anxiety among the hosts over whether the text of a deal can be formulated in due time.
  • (3) But the bigger question, the one that has vexed historians, biographers and holocaust experts for eight decades, is why she was there.
  • (4) Cs (2 mM) reduced diastolic depolarization (DD) at different [Ca]O and in 10.8 mM [Ca]O revealed an oscillatory potential (VOS) and the decay of a prolonged depolarization (Vex).
  • (5) The past few days have been vexing ones for reporting guidelines, voluntary or legal.
  • (6) The present data also highlighted the vexed relationship between stress and seizure control, which needs to be further investigated.
  • (7) Another vexed national question in the coming months will be this one: who is the most worthy winner of BBC Sports Personality of the Year?
  • (8) Delivery of monoclonal antibodies to solid tumors is a vexing problem that must be solved if these antibodies are to realize their promise in therapy.
  • (9) Pathologists without considerable experience in the diagnosis of bone tumors find this question especially vexing.
  • (10) Caffeine (5 mM) abolishes Vos and Ios and increases Vex and Iex (as DOXO does), and adding DOXO slightly increased Vex and Iex.
  • (11) Posttraumatic joint stiffness is particularly vexing in the small joints.
  • (12) In this spirit, a vignette is offered from a clinical area in which questions of "health" and "illness" are particularly vexing at present.
  • (13) Some might argue that our eyes weren't quite on the ball back in '89: never mind the cataclysmic political upheaval in eastern Europe – the results of which still echo around the world – let's devote ourselves to a page concerned with vexed questions such as: why is water wet?
  • (14) The draft provides scant details on the vexed subject of accountability for emission reduction programmes.
  • (15) Nowhere was the commission’s balancing act more finely weighted than on the vexed question of bioenergy, which Cañete admitted was “a clear problem”.
  • (16) The top Chinese negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, said there was also a possibility of advances on the vexed issued of transparency – how to monitor, report and verify each nation's emissions to ensure they are honouring their pledges.
  • (17) But now it’s Isis who are the insurgents,” leaving the peshmerga with the vexing challenge of defending and holding territory.
  • (18) On the vexed issue of longer term finance, the Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi presented an offer to reduce developing country demands by 75% to $100bn a year from 2020, in return for guarantees of how the money would be distributed.
  • (19) Discussed here are some contours of the vexing problem of adequate minority participation in the health professions and a brief discussion of some programs that appear to be working.
  • (20) After the creed and some Benjamin Britten, and a blessing and a long round of applause, the man charged with holding together the fractious global Anglican communion as it struggles with the vexed issues of women bishops and same-sex marriage processed out of the cathedral and into the bitterly cold spring afternoon.

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