What's the difference between overwrought and tawdry?

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.

Tawdry


Definition:

  • (superl.) Bought at the festival of St. Audrey.
  • (superl.) Very fine and showy in colors, without taste or elegance; having an excess of showy ornaments without grace; cheap and gaudy; as, a tawdry dress; tawdry feathers; tawdry colors.
  • (n.) A necklace of a rural fashion, bought at St. Audrey's fair; hence, a necklace in general.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The citizenship debate is tawdry, conflated and ultimately pointless | Richard Ackland Read more On Wednesday, the prime minister criticised lawyers for backing terrorists.
  • (2) Writing in the Observer under the headline "Michael Gove, using history for politicking is tawdry" , Hunt seethes, "the government is using what should be a moment for national reflection and respectful debate to rewrite the historical record and sow political division."
  • (3) The BBC presenter confided to the Radio Times that he shares widespread public disdain for the "tawdry pretences" of modern politicians and the "green-bench pantomime" of Westminster politics.
  • (4) They were already emboldened by the tawdry campaign of fear used to stop Scottish independence.
  • (5) Rudd's "zero tolerance" for corruption, and his "disgust" for the tawdry shenanigans in NSW, were in the news cycle before the Icac recommendations – a deliberate bit of media management.
  • (6) Garvey finished with this somewhat tangential attack: "There are a lot of people who feel that Britain is a bit tawdry," going on to list its seamier side – reality telly, 24-hour drinking, a lapdancing club on every street corner, a Radio 5 Live presenter doing Woman's Hour (that last is my input) … "There are many people who have an asbo and the family are rather chuffed," she said.
  • (7) I wear a hijab and that’s going to be a problem, but once one person is able to do that, it then allows other people to dream too.” Though the never-ending campaign cycle and tawdry political fighting can breed apathy and disinterest in the American political process, Omar’s family fought for political representation, engendering in Omar a deep enthusiasm and optimism about the importance of the vote.
  • (8) This tawdry friendship of convenience, these pageants, lies and unethical compromises, may benefit Cameron and Xi, but they are an insult to the citizens of Britain, who cherish their hard-fought freedoms, and to those in China , who are still struggling courageously to achieve them.
  • (9) The prime minister who once promised a new politics is revealed as a shameless practitioner of the tawdry old art of government by patronage.
  • (10) Yesterday Bin Hammam claimed the allegations were a "tawdry manoeuvre" to discredit him ahead of the election, claiming for the first time the money was for administrative costs and travel expenses.
  • (11) It has become a symbol of intolerance, it faces a court battle with the federal government, and it has exemplified that most un-southern quality: tawdriness.
  • (12) Warrant suggests federal police are investigating Mal Brough over diary leak Read more Dreyfus, the shadow attorney general, told parliament the Australian people deserved answers about Brough’s “grubby” role in “one of the most tawdry episodes” of the Tony Abbott era.
  • (13) That is the tawdry secret that dare not speak its name."
  • (14) Since his conviction, politicians from all sides of the chamber have been, as the BBC always says, "united in their condemnation" of Walker and his tawdry struggle to hang on to his job and his £58,000 salary when he ought instead to have resigned immediately.
  • (15) "Press regulation is too important an issue to be answered by some tawdry deal cooked up at two in the morning in Ed Miliband's office," he told BBC Radio 4's PM programme on Tuesday.
  • (16) Bin Hammam, who previously labelled the investigation into the allegations a "tawdry manoeuvre" aimed at destabilising his election campaign, earlier muttered still more darkly.
  • (17) This apparently tawdry and peripheral form contains a hallucinatory history of the modern self.
  • (18) "It's getting a bit desperate isn't it when a club make an announcement that they've not had any interest in their players, trying to give the impression that they disapprove of the entire tawdry business.
  • (19) This is slightly disingenuous – in January, he and Trudie, his film-producer wife of 18 years and mother to four of his six children, gave a joint interview to Harper's Bazaar in which he claimed: "I don't think pedestrian sex is very interesting… we like tawdry."
  • (20) And the FA itself might finally recognise its responsibility to football’s fans and lead a boycott of Fifa , withdrawing in all but name from the committees and procedures of the tawdry, discredited outfit that represents the world’s favourite game.