What's the difference between noble and quixotic?

Noble


Definition:

  • (superl.) Possessing eminence, elevation, dignity, etc.; above whatever is low, mean, degrading, or dishonorable; magnanimous; as, a noble nature or action; a noble heart.
  • (superl.) Grand; stately; magnificent; splendid; as, a noble edifice.
  • (superl.) Of exalted rank; of or pertaining to the nobility; distinguished from the masses by birth, station, or title; highborn; as, noble blood; a noble personage.
  • (n.) A person of rank above a commoner; a nobleman; a peer.
  • (n.) An English money of account, and, formerly, a gold coin, of the value of 6 s. 8 d. sterling, or about $1.61.
  • (n.) A European fish; the lyrie.
  • (v. t.) To make noble; to ennoble.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The phi-model also gives the noble numbers and moreover orders them in a way that establishes connections with the morphogenetic principles used in models for pattern generation; the order has to do with the relative frequencies of the spiral patterns in nature.
  • (2) The current literature, for the most part, cites the use of noble alloys as controls for trials of alternative materials.
  • (3) In October, Amazon announces a digital partnership with DC Comics, prompting Barnes & Noble to remove its comic books from its shelves.
  • (4) The absolute mutant number and the induced mutant frequency quantitated from a treated culture is generally higher in BBL compared to Noble agar.
  • (5) Colonies plated in BBL agar tend to appear significantly earlier on the plates than those cloned in Noble agar.
  • (6) Ray Noble, a solar adviser at the UK-based Renewable Energy Association, said that the technology was relatively straightforward but the only reason to build floating farms would be if land was very tight.
  • (7) The foundation years debate focuses on what seems to be the most promising way of achieving that noble ambition.
  • (8) The potential was found to shift to a less noble state when the system of the chlorophyll-naphthoquinone electrode was inserted into NAD solution with illumination.
  • (9) A concept so noble in the drawing rooms of Manhattan has degenerated into a sickening prelude to more bloodshed.
  • (10) Fast migrating properdin (P) represented activated properdin and occured as a result of activation of properdin in the Noble agar medium used for electrophoresis provided sufficient cofactors, including Mg2+, were present.
  • (11) Dr Noble and Professor Mason, explore the incidence of incest and society's attitudes to it from legal, anthropological, medical and social viewpoints.
  • (12) Higher endpoint dilutions were obtained by the use of 1% Noble agar in immunoosmophoresis than with 1% Ionagar no.
  • (13) It was not just a fantastic sporting occasion but a glimpse of a more noble Britain: a country learning to be at ease with disability, and passionately, generously, committed to a vision of equality of opportunity.
  • (14) European elections have a noble history of delivering such temporary bloody noses.
  • (15) What campaigners for euthanasia often fail to realise is that, however noble it is in theory, conferring the right to die always runs the risk of diminishing the right to live.
  • (16) The company hired by Royal Dutch Shell plc in 2012 to drill on petroleum leases in the Chukchi — Sugarland, Texas-based Noble Drilling US LLC — in December agreed to pay $12.2m after pleading guilty to eight felony environmental and maritime crimes on board the Noble Discoverer.
  • (17) The couple met at Nottingham Polytechnic in 1986, and moved to London in the early Nineties - just as the Young British Artist phenomenon gathered steam and media attention - where Noble studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art .
  • (18) For centuries, kings and queens had no option but to contract out courts, taxes, roads, prisons, to nobles and business folk.
  • (19) Stopping the boats” and avoiding people dying at sea is a noble motive if its combined with solutions that place the rights of refugees first.
  • (20) Like the US government following revelations from Abu Ghraib, the British government wants to dismiss the miscreants as the deviant wrongdoers in an otherwise noble cause.

Quixotic


Definition:

  • (a.) Like Don Quixote; romantic to extravagance; absurdly chivalric; apt to be deluded.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Tap the relevant details into Google, though, and the real names soon appear before your eyes: the boss in question, stern and yet oddly quixotic, is Phyllis Westberg of Harold Ober Associates.
  • (2) It also highlights how mass-resettlement is not a quixotic policy; it has been achieved before in the aftermath of a bloody war – and could be achieved again.
  • (3) Based more on disappointment in McConnell than Bevin's promise (or crazy talk), his otherwise quixotic campaign (unseating a five-term minority leader) has gotten national attention and support from the likes of the Senate Conservative Fund (early backers of Cruz and Lee, as well as Cotton) and Palin.
  • (4) Asked why he had not relied on US intelligence for a claim with extraordinary legal implications, Trump offered a quixotic reply: “Because I don’t want to do anything that’s going to violate any strength of an agency.
  • (5) Gilliam also said that he would be restarting work on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote next year.
  • (6) There are further echoes, inevitably, of films about the quixotic, sometimes cruel exercise of journalistic power in Citizen Kane and the Sweet Smell of Success.
  • (7) Gilliam himself took to the stage to reveal plans for his long-delayed film version of the story of Don Quixote - the feature he was forced to abandon in 1999 after a freak storm destroyed his set.
  • (8) The world is flat in ways the high-flying global theoreticians don't always acknowledge; these days, even someone from the materially fortunate parts of the world – a man with a ruddy complexion, a woman in a Prada suit – is pulled aside for what is quixotically known as "random screening".
  • (9) It appears the Don Quixote that finally makes it into multiplexes will be radically different from that which might once have been seen.
  • (10) 4.31pm BST Texas Senator Ted Cruz, whose quixotic campaign to "defund" Obamacare was the stick in the spokes that got us here, could – could – cause a default all by himself, Joshua Green reports in Bloomberg BusinessWeek: How could this happen?
  • (11) The hard graft for centre-left parties across Europe is to turn this around – not to be a 21st-century Don Quixote forever tilting at 19th- or 20th-century windmills.
  • (12) Perhaps it is the classically gaunt face, or maybe it is the aquiline nose, but he looks exactly like Don Quixote.
  • (13) LA cyclists, until then lonely, quixotic figures, felt emboldened to organise their own rides, using force of numbers to co-exist with traffic in mass rides, and for races acting like flash mobs, briefly sealing off an alley here, a boulevard there.
  • (14) Royal Ballet Christmas season Instead of its regular Christmas staples – The Nutcracker, Cinderella or The Tales of Beatrix Potter – the Royal is courting the festive box office with two recent productions: Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote.
  • (15) Remember Yusor Abu-Salha as more than just a victim of the Chapel Hill shooting | Rana Odeh Read more But even setting aside the questions that must be asked by law enforcement – and even now, we are learning more about the accused killer, including details of a stash of weapons he reportedly had at his apartment – the local community, and America at large, must begin the quixotic mission of trying to find deeper meaning in the tragedy.
  • (16) Suddenly we've discovered in our midst an exotic prancer, a quixotic chancer, an electronic Elgar who has penned some of the gaudiest, most soaring rock and roll anthems to be heard in a decade.
  • (17) Breezeblocks is the sort of idiosyncratic indie we'd imagine bands we've never heard such as Swell Maps or Arab Strap would have purveyed, affirming that there are quixotic imaginations at work here.
  • (18) He told Podemos’s followers to dream and, like that noble madman Don Quixote, “take their dreams seriously”.
  • (19) He made his name with quixotic docs about Elvis, medieval animal trials and US murder sprees, and went on to direct Man on Wire , which won him an Oscar in 2009, as well as films such as 2012's Shadow Dancer .
  • (20) Lars Von Trier is known for being unpredictable, quixotic, puckish and deliberately provocative.