What's the difference between overwrought and showy?

Overwrought


Definition:

  • () of Overwork
  • (p. p. & a.) Wrought upon excessively; overworked; overexcited.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) With the students back, parliament in session and that Killers album slowly being revealed as an overwrought dud, what better time for the greatest minds of their generation to go down the pub and invent a new genre?
  • (2) No one assumes that New Zealand will have an impact in South Africa, yet insouciance is an asset when other sides are so overwrought.
  • (3) Lost in all of the cyber-Armageddon rhetoric is Sony’s own negligent security practices, which is maybe where some of Hollywood’s own overwrought ire should be pointed, rather than blaming journalists for reporting.
  • (4) The season premiere, which aired on Sunday, has everything its returning fans demand: shocks and quips and china sauce-boats, and overwrought manners and hats.
  • (5) One morning we had a text vote for whether or not to play Curtain Call by the Damned, in its full 18 minutes of overwrought gothic glory.
  • (6) Overwrought tell-all memoirs are liable to elicit this response even from those who are not directly affected.
  • (7) One of the older ones actually burst into tears, somewhat overwrought by the whole experience.
  • (8) I, for one, enjoyed the overwrought silliness of series two.
  • (9) He is overwrought and half-asleep, and so Forster risks giving him purple cravings for "big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science can reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend".
  • (10) The 34-year-old was as overwrought as any testosterone-maddened youngster but could still have contrived a triumph.
  • (11) It’s as if too many overwrought, mainly male, pub bores have been allowed to take over what is, never forget, a vote for the whole country’s future.
  • (12) Should he ever need alternative employment - and, after all, he might - Brown might consider a career writing poems in overwrought Hallmark greetings cards.
  • (13) The understandable but overwrought attacks on Saif Gaddafi that followed his embrace of his father, clan and regime in Tripoli at the start of the uprising, have made it extremely difficult to pursue a diplomatic track in Libya.
  • (14) All of which she squares up to with Boudiccan fortitude (overwrought grandma years).
  • (15) There is a danger for Franzen, that an author who is not a native user of the internet will be exposed in the way in which he writes about it, and there are a few false notes in Purity; an off use of the term “going viral”, a tin-eared reference to Jeff Bezos, and the overwrought phrase “moused and clicked” to describe the activity of industrious interns at their desks.
  • (16) Whether overwrought or merely unlucky, Liverpool could not capitalise on initial ebullience and fell behind nine minutes from the interval.
  • (17) In a number of later films, he is often seen trying to direct some overwrought superstar.
  • (18) It certainly paved the way for two acclaimed debut albums in the trip-hop vein – Portishead's dense and sometimes overwrought Dummy (1994) and Tricky's darkly mesmeric Maxinquaye from 1995 – as well as the more well-mannered beats of acts such as Morcheeba and Zero 7.
  • (19) For me, it’s just indulging my passion for overwrought choreography, pure performance and cheesy music.
  • (20) I felt odd: overtired, overwrought, unpleasantly like my brain had been removed and my skull stuffed with something like microwaved aluminium foil, dinted, charred and shorting with sparks.

Showy


Definition:

  • (a.) Making a show; attracting attention; presenting a marked appearance; ostentatious; gay; gaudy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Why on earth launch a showy new pound coin with so much fanfare, when the real news is supposed to be the UK's superb growth projections, absurdly generous new subsidies for childcare and a thoroughly welcome rise in the income tax threshold, courtesy of Nick Clegg?
  • (2) It is simply a question of following the steps carefully to produce a brilliantly showy pudding.
  • (3) Shilton springs a long way to his left to catch the ball – a slightly showy save but still a good one.
  • (4) Born in 1973 in Honiton, Devon, the future champion was "never showy, but quietly confident," according to her mother, Linda Davis.
  • (5) The result is a mash-up of 9 To 5, Strangers On A Train and The Hangover, and as usual, Bateman's dry wit is an oasis of calm in a movie full of showy comic turns from Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and others.
  • (6) Similar anticipation by Baines prevented Fellaini scoring a second after a pirouette with the ball in the Everton area, then when Rashford played Valencia in on the overlap with a showy disguised pass, the United player had to delay his cross because not a single red shirt was waiting in the box.
  • (7) The same instinct for the simple, the dramatic and the showy governs his approach to recasting school exams, of which his announcement last week on A-levels was the latest example.
  • (8) "He's very calm and reassuring and he's not showy," said a senior television news executive.
  • (9) "It's not because I'm being showy or precious," she said.
  • (10) There will be some showy changes to domestic law, which other EU members will disapprove of, but can tolerate.
  • (11) I’ll be honest – the whole thing has always just seemed a bit sparkly and showy to me.
  • (12) By her own admission this week May is not a “showy politician” who courts the media, gossips about colleagues over lunch or spends time in the watering holes of Westminster.
  • (13) The FA has been buying land next to schools and building pitches: enclosed timber-built, artificial-turfed pitches, paid for by money that might otherwise have ended up in some familiar dead end: unnecessarily showy mega-stadiums, executive salaries, another Bugatti in the garage.
  • (14) This might tell us more about the company Amis keeps than the views of the general population; especially if you tire of these showy contributions from someone who spends most of his time somewhere else.
  • (15) In a recent Guardian review, they were deemed "big bold showy headphones ... with lacklustre sound" while What Hi-Fi said they were a "one-trick trendy pony" with sound that lacked detail or articulation.
  • (16) Consumers are polarised between bargain prices for basic clothes and trading up for more showy clothes – this may change, and Primark’s foray into markets like the USA adds an element of future risk.” At Primark’s owner, ABF, profits before tax halved to £213m.
  • (17) Meticulously presented, though contrasts of textures and flavours sometimes go too far down the showy molecular route.
  • (18) It is not a showy cry, designed to elicit sympathy.
  • (19) It really breathes as it hobbles along, and yet it's never showy nor overly optimistic.
  • (20) Anthony Lane, writing in the New Yorker, laid his cards on the table: 'If you don't get this cut, if you think it's cheesy or showy or over the top, and if something inside you doesn't flare up and burn at the spectacle that Lean has conjured, then you might as well give up the movies.'