What's the difference between official and officious?

Official


Definition:

  • (n.) Of or pertaining to an office or public trust; as, official duties, or routine.
  • (n.) Derived from the proper office or officer, or from the proper authority; made or communicated by virtue of authority; as, an official statement or report.
  • (n.) Approved by authority; sanctioned by the pharmacopoeia; appointed to be used in medicine; as, an official drug or preparation. Cf. Officinal.
  • (n.) Discharging an office or function.
  • (a.) One who holds an office; esp., a subordinate executive officer or attendant.
  • (a.) An ecclesiastical judge appointed by a bishop, chapter, archdeacon, etc., with charge of the spiritual jurisdiction.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In January 2011, the Nobel peace prize laureate was admitted to a Johannesburg hospital for what officials initially described as tests but what turned out to be an acute respiratory infection .
  • (2) A survey carried out two and three years after the launch of the official campaign also showed a reduction in the prevalence of rickets in children taking low dose supplements equivalent to about 2.5 micrograms (100 IU) vitamin D daily.
  • (3) An official inquiry into the Rotherham abuse scandal blamed failings by Rotherham council and South Yorkshire police.
  • (4) Faisal Abu Shahla, a senior official in Fatah, an organisation responsible for a good deal of repression of its own when it was in power, accuses Hamas of holding 700 political prisoners in Gaza as part of a broad campaign to suppress dissent.
  • (5) A dozen peers hold ministerial positions and Westminster officials are expecting them to keep the paperwork to run the country flowing and the ministerial seats warm while their elected colleagues fight for votes.
  • (6) Greek officials categorically denied the report with many describing it as a "joke".
  • (7) This is not an argument for the status quo: teaching must be given greater priority within HE, but the flipside has to be an understanding on the part of students, ministers, officials, the public and the media that academics (just like politicians) cannot make everyone happy all of the time.
  • (8) Meanwhile, Hunt has been accused of backtracking on a key recommendation in the official report into Mid Staffs.
  • (9) A Palestinian delegation was to hold truce talks on Sunday in Cairo with senior US and Egyptian officials, but Israel has said it sees no point in sending its negotiators to the meeting, citing what it says are Hamas breaches of previous agreed truces.
  • (10) Channel 4 News said on Friday that Manji and the programme’s producer, ITN, had made an official complaint to press regulator Ipso.
  • (11) It can feel as though an official opinion has been issued.
  • (12) In one of Pruitt’s first official acts, for example, he overruled the recommendation of his own agency’s scientists, based on years of meticulous research, to ban a pesticide shown to cause nerve damage, one that poses a clear risk to children, farmworkers and rural drinking water supplies.
  • (13) Sawers's views are echoed by both US and Israeli officials.
  • (14) An official from Cafcass, the children and family court advisory service, tried to persuade the child in several interviews, but eventually the official told the court that further persuasion was inappropriate and essentially abusive.
  • (15) When allegations of systemic doping and cover-ups first emerged in the runup to the 2013 Russian world athletics championships, an IOC spokesman insisted: “Anti-doping measures in Russia have improved significantly over the last five years with an effective, efficient and new laboratory and equipment in Moscow.” London Olympics were sabotaged by Russia’s doping, report says Read more We now know that the head of that lauded Moscow lab, Grigory Rodchenko, admitted to intentionally destroying 1,417 samples in December last year shortly before Wada officials visited.
  • (16) Governmental officials as well as medical scientists in Taiwan have worked hard in recent years to develop and to implement various measures, such as prenatal diagnosis and neonatal screening, to lower the incidence of hereditary diseases and mental retardation in the population.
  • (17) My father wrote to the official who had ruled I could not ride and asked for Championships to be established for girls.
  • (18) Analysis of official registers reveals the 38 companies in the first wave of the initiative – more than two-thirds of which are based overseas – have collectively had 698 face-to-face meetings with ministers under the current government, prompting accusations of an over-cosy relationship between corporations and ministers.
  • (19) But late last month, Amisom pushed them out of Afgoye, a strategic stronghold 30km from Mogadishu, where Amisom officials say the militants used to manufacture explosives used in attacks on the capital.
  • (20) Without a renewables target, Energy Department officials said, it would be possible for a large proportion of this shortfall to be met by gas-fired power generation.

Officious


Definition:

  • (a.) Pertaining to, or being in accordance with, duty.
  • (a.) Disposed to serve; kind; obliging.
  • (a.) Importunately interposing services; intermeddling in affairs in which one has no concern; meddlesome.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In January 2011, the Nobel peace prize laureate was admitted to a Johannesburg hospital for what officials initially described as tests but what turned out to be an acute respiratory infection .
  • (2) A survey carried out two and three years after the launch of the official campaign also showed a reduction in the prevalence of rickets in children taking low dose supplements equivalent to about 2.5 micrograms (100 IU) vitamin D daily.
  • (3) An official inquiry into the Rotherham abuse scandal blamed failings by Rotherham council and South Yorkshire police.
  • (4) Faisal Abu Shahla, a senior official in Fatah, an organisation responsible for a good deal of repression of its own when it was in power, accuses Hamas of holding 700 political prisoners in Gaza as part of a broad campaign to suppress dissent.
  • (5) A dozen peers hold ministerial positions and Westminster officials are expecting them to keep the paperwork to run the country flowing and the ministerial seats warm while their elected colleagues fight for votes.
  • (6) Greek officials categorically denied the report with many describing it as a "joke".
  • (7) This is not an argument for the status quo: teaching must be given greater priority within HE, but the flipside has to be an understanding on the part of students, ministers, officials, the public and the media that academics (just like politicians) cannot make everyone happy all of the time.
  • (8) Meanwhile, Hunt has been accused of backtracking on a key recommendation in the official report into Mid Staffs.
  • (9) A Palestinian delegation was to hold truce talks on Sunday in Cairo with senior US and Egyptian officials, but Israel has said it sees no point in sending its negotiators to the meeting, citing what it says are Hamas breaches of previous agreed truces.
  • (10) Channel 4 News said on Friday that Manji and the programme’s producer, ITN, had made an official complaint to press regulator Ipso.
  • (11) It can feel as though an official opinion has been issued.
  • (12) In one of Pruitt’s first official acts, for example, he overruled the recommendation of his own agency’s scientists, based on years of meticulous research, to ban a pesticide shown to cause nerve damage, one that poses a clear risk to children, farmworkers and rural drinking water supplies.
  • (13) Sawers's views are echoed by both US and Israeli officials.
  • (14) An official from Cafcass, the children and family court advisory service, tried to persuade the child in several interviews, but eventually the official told the court that further persuasion was inappropriate and essentially abusive.
  • (15) When allegations of systemic doping and cover-ups first emerged in the runup to the 2013 Russian world athletics championships, an IOC spokesman insisted: “Anti-doping measures in Russia have improved significantly over the last five years with an effective, efficient and new laboratory and equipment in Moscow.” London Olympics were sabotaged by Russia’s doping, report says Read more We now know that the head of that lauded Moscow lab, Grigory Rodchenko, admitted to intentionally destroying 1,417 samples in December last year shortly before Wada officials visited.
  • (16) Governmental officials as well as medical scientists in Taiwan have worked hard in recent years to develop and to implement various measures, such as prenatal diagnosis and neonatal screening, to lower the incidence of hereditary diseases and mental retardation in the population.
  • (17) My father wrote to the official who had ruled I could not ride and asked for Championships to be established for girls.
  • (18) Analysis of official registers reveals the 38 companies in the first wave of the initiative – more than two-thirds of which are based overseas – have collectively had 698 face-to-face meetings with ministers under the current government, prompting accusations of an over-cosy relationship between corporations and ministers.
  • (19) But late last month, Amisom pushed them out of Afgoye, a strategic stronghold 30km from Mogadishu, where Amisom officials say the militants used to manufacture explosives used in attacks on the capital.
  • (20) Without a renewables target, Energy Department officials said, it would be possible for a large proportion of this shortfall to be met by gas-fired power generation.