What's the difference between oppress and subdue?

Oppress


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To impose excessive burdens upon; to overload; hence, to treat with unjust rigor or with cruelty.
  • (v. t.) To ravish; to violate.
  • (v. t.) To put down; to crush out; to suppress.
  • (v. t.) To produce a sensation of weight in (some part of the body); as, my lungs are oppressed by the damp air; excess of food oppresses the stomach.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I hope this movement will continue and spread for it has within itself the power to stand up to fascism, be victorious in the face of extremism and say no to oppressive political powers everywhere.” Appearing via videolink from Tehran, and joined by London mayor Sadiq Khan and Palme d’Or winner Mike Leigh, Farhadi said: “We are all citizens of the world and I will endeavour to protect and spread this unity.” The London screening of The Salesman on Sunday evening wasintended to be a show of unity and strength against Trump’s travel ban, which attempted to block arrivals in the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
  • (2) Much less obvious – except in the fictional domain of the C Thomas Howell film Soul Man – is why someone would want to “pass” in the other direction and voluntarily take on the weight of racial oppression.
  • (3) But some warn that oppression of the minority is heading towards breaking point.
  • (4) 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".
  • (5) The terrorists know that if Iraq and Afghanistan survive their assault, come through their travails, seize the opportunity the future offers, then those countries will stand not just as nations liberated from oppression, but as a lesson to humankind everywhere and a profound antidote to the poison of religious extremism.
  • (6) But there are very oppressed people here and I have to stay with them.
  • (7) Ukip accuses Theresa May of condoning these “symbols of the oppression of women”.
  • (8) Similarly at world level, it considers the struggles and efforts by the miserable and oppressed nations for achievement of their legitimate rights and independence as their due rights, because people have the right to liberate their countries from colonialism and obtain their rights.
  • (9) He added that the producers were also seeking to educate a new generation about the system of apartheid through which South Africa's white minority oppressed the black majority for more than 40 years up to 1990.
  • (10) "This false notion of choice, which is increasingly used to justify the oppression of women," says Ellis.
  • (11) The study of 106 pregnant women engaged in microbiological synthesis production revealed the tendency to increasing genitalia contamination by Candida yeast-like fungi, including fungi-protein producers, and also oppression of immunologic reactivity in comparison with nonpregnant women and the control group.
  • (12) A statement from al-Shabaab on Monday said the latest attack – the deadliest since Westgate – was revenge for the "Kenyan government's brutal oppression of Muslims in Kenya through coercion, intimidation and extrajudicial killings of Muslim scholars".
  • (13) A 46-year-old woman occasionally experienced palpitation of short duration and chest oppression since 1977.
  • (14) "We should oppose the practices of the big bullying the small, the strong domineering over the weak and the rich oppressing the poor."
  • (15) Behind the dancing girls and schmaltzy lyrics that usually characterise pop songs, these men act as the all-oppressing eye of the industry: telling female singers that weight loss and sexual objectification are the only feasible routes to stardom; stripping down women in music videos to their underwear while leaving their male counterparts untouched.
  • (16) Choosing the example of prisoners' voting rights, which the ECHR has ordered the UK to implement, the supreme court justice observed that the issue "has nothing to do with the oppression of vulnerable minorities".
  • (17) On Sunday Assange said: "Will it [the US] return to and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world?"
  • (18) A 62 year old man, who had underlying diseases of pneumoconiosis and hypertensive heart disease, visited Chikuho Rosai Hospital complaining of chest oppression and general fatigue on Feb. 7, 1987.
  • (19) We did not perform a sexy version of oppression or create a teasing "naughty" campaign.
  • (20) He is sexism, male domination, and oppression against women personified.

Subdue


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To bring under; to conquer by force or the exertion of superior power, and bring into permanent subjection; to reduce under dominion; to vanquish.
  • (v. t.) To overpower so as to disable from further resistance; to crush.
  • (v. t.) To destroy the force of; to overcome; as, medicines subdue a fever.
  • (v. t.) To render submissive; to bring under command; to reduce to mildness or obedience; to tame; as, to subdue a stubborn child; to subdue the temper or passions.
  • (v. t.) To overcome, as by persuasion or other mild means; as, to subdue opposition by argument or entreaties.
  • (v. t.) To reduce to tenderness; to melt; to soften; as, to subdue ferocity by tears.
  • (v. t.) To make mellow; to break, as land; also, to destroy, as weeds.
  • (v. t.) To reduce the intensity or degree of; to tone down; to soften; as, to subdue the brilliancy of colors.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) So I am, of course, intrigued about the city’s newest tourist attraction: a hangover bar, open at weekends, in which sufferers can come in and have a bit of a lie down in soothingly subdued lighting, while sipping vitamin-enriched smoothies.
  • (2) Hopes that the Queen's diamond jubilee and the £9bn spent on the Olympics would lift sales over the longer term have largely been dashed as growth slows and the outlook, though robust with a growing order book, remains subdued.
  • (3) The director general of the CML, Paul Smee, said: "January is always a subdued month in the mortgage market but the underlying trend and strong year-on-year growth across all borrower groups indicates a strong start to 2014 continuing the sort of lending levels seen throughout 2013.
  • (4) England had started with some well-executed set piece moves, a triangular formation in midfield initially foxing Australia, but it was the Wallabies’ ability to react in open play that marked them out: Foley’s first try, after Israel Folau, otherwise subdued on the night, ran through Robshaw, came after he noticed Ben Youngs had drifted too wide and cut inside the scrum-half and Joe Launchbury before wrongfooting Brown.
  • (5) An investigation by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem concluded that while she did have a knife under her niqab veil she posed no threat to soldiers at the time she was shot and could have been subdued without being fatally wounded.
  • (6) In these cases, the woman’s wardrobe must feature subdued tones.
  • (7) Releasing its quarterly inflation report, the Bank's monetary policy committee admitted that the UK recession was deeper than previously thought and that inflation would stay very subdued for a long time – a signal that interest rates will not rise in the short term.
  • (8) He does not have the ingenuity of Diego Maradona or the lawless wit of Luis Suárez, so does not cast spells over opponents, but he has shown that he can certainly help subdue them and uplift his team.
  • (9) The company blamed the decline in performance on a challenging trading and competitive environment, ongoing subdued consumer sentiment and economic uncertainty, the effect of strong market capacity growth and an unrecovered $27m cost of the carbon tax.
  • (10) And we are hopeful that a recovery in productivity will keep firms' cost pressures subdued," its economists said in a research note.
  • (11) "However, one area of the market which is subdued is remortgaging – all the more surprising when you consider the excellent rates available and the threat of an interest rate rise.
  • (12) Examples included officers punching and using pepper spray on people who have already been subdued, including after they have been handcuffed and at times “as punishment for the person’s earlier verbal or physical resistance”.
  • (13) In the Alevi association, in this subdued but defiant campaign, Demirtaş looked past the cameras, his gaze static and distant, and seemed not to be there.
  • (14) Believing the suspect’s magazine was empty, he chased the gunman in hopes of subduing him.
  • (15) No, Mourinho always wants to win but the priority was certainly to hold the fort – and there is no better team in England when it comes to subduing high-calibre opponents.
  • (16) Forming a coalition will be challenging, while operational considerations must not be subordinate to political ones, Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies told the Guardian: "A coalition in which sectarian Iraqi Shia militias play a key role because these are Baghdad's only or most reliable troops, or in which Kurdish fighters are asked to operate far from their territories, could antagonise the very constituency whose support against Isis is fundamental: the various local Sunni communities who have accommodated or been subdued by Isis."
  • (17) The crowd was initially subdued, having just seen Murray crash out and there were plenty of empty seats when the match began.
  • (18) It had begun as a subdued explosion, really, in the early 1960s, when a new generation of bohemians began to adapt and mutate the culture of the 'Beats' - Jack Kerouac et al - which had installed itself on North Beach during the late 1950s.
  • (19) A subdued Rosberg was in his shoulder-shrugging mood.
  • (20) The results indicate that the extent of DNA degradation to acid-soluble nucleotides is highest in chromatin at the early stages of gonad growth, being drastically subdued in the mature sperm cell.