What's the difference between overwrought and subdued?

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.

Subdued


Definition:

  • (imp. & p. p.) of Subdue
  • (a.) Conquered; overpowered; crushed; submissive; mild.
  • (a.) Not glaring in color; soft in tone.

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.