What's the difference between persuade and undermine?

Persuade


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To influence or gain over by argument, advice, entreaty, expostulation, etc.; to draw or incline to a determination by presenting sufficient motives.
  • (v. t.) To try to influence.
  • (v. t.) To convince by argument, or by reasons offered or suggested from reflection, etc.; to cause to believe.
  • (v. t.) To inculcate by argument or expostulation; to advise; to recommend.
  • (v. i.) To use persuasion; to plead; to prevail by persuasion.
  • (n.) Persuasion.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Gordon Brown believes that the fact of the G20 summit has persuaded many tax havens, such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein, to indicate that they will adopt a more open approach.
  • (2) 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.
  • (3) She kept it up for three years, until her son's letters finally persuaded her to cut down to one day a week.
  • (4) We simply do whatever nature needs and will work with anyone that wants to help wildlife.” His views might come as a surprise to some of the RSPB’s 1.1 million members, who would have been persuaded by its original pledge “to discourage the wanton destruction of birds”; they would equally have been a surprise to the RSPB’s detractors in the shooting world.
  • (5) That refusal seems to have persuaded Apple's team, which has been core to the development of WebKit since using it for the Safari browser, released in January 2003, to introduce WebKit2 earlier this year which did offer that capability.
  • (6) It seeks to acquaint them with 'ethical' arguments against their work which, because they are simple and plausible, persuade many people.
  • (7) Obama will meet with Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas tomorrow as well, but US envoy George Mitchell has had no luck in recent weeks trying to persuade Netanyahu to compromise on the settlements.
  • (8) The charity Bite the Ballot , which persuaded hundreds of thousands to register before the last general election, is to set up “democracy cafes” in Starbucks branches, laying on experts to explain how to register and vote, and what the referendum is all about (Bite the Ballot does not take sides but merely encourages participation).
  • (9) The writer John Lanchester concedes that democracies will always need spies, but reading the Snowden documents persuaded him that piecing together habits of thought from internet searches takes things far beyond conventional spying: “Google doesn’t just know you’re gay before you tell your mum; it knows you’re gay before you do.
  • (10) But Richard Hall, director of infrastructure at Consumer Futures, a consumer watchdog, said Ofgem had "produced a lot of evidence that would persuade a third party that there is a trend [of rising prices]".
  • (11) McCain, a former Republican presidential candidate with an influential voice on US foreign affairs, is seen by the Obama administration as a potentially important intermediary in its intensive push to persuade Congress to swing behind the plan for airstrikes .
  • (12) According to Deborah Mattinson, his pollster, Brown " loved slogans and believed them to be imbued with a mystical power capable of persuading the most intransigent voter", and therefore went a bundle on them – not least " A future fair for all ", the surreal dud with which Labour went to the country in 2010, following 2005's equally idiotic " forward not back ".
  • (13) For a while North Korea refused to play, but after delicate negotiations the players were persuaded back on to the pitch and the correct flag was displayed alongside the team photos.
  • (14) When the owners of Manchester City finally managed to persuade Pep Guardiola to oversee the next stage of their masterplan it is fair to say they probably did not expect to be approaching Christmas scuffling with a team of Watford’s limitations for their first league win at home in almost three months.
  • (15) He has some suggestions for what might be done, including easing changing the planning laws to free up parts of the green belt, financial incentives to persuade local authorities to build, and the replacement of the council tax and stamp duty land tax with a new local property tax with automatic annual revaluations.
  • (16) Even if nobody switched party, the general election result would look very different to what’s predicted if millennials could be persuaded to vote at the same rate as pensioners, as polls factor in turnout differences and oversample the elderly accordingly.
  • (17) For some people, free cash will persuade them to take the plunge.
  • (18) The fact that the leave campaign are getting things as straightforward as this wrong should call into judgment the bigger argument about leaving the EU.” He said out campaigners were trying to persuade people to vote for Brexit solely on the back of an issue “that is not true”.
  • (19) We had already persuaded him to give us a little extra time, telling him we would both pay him on a particular day, but when that day rolled around, neither of us had the money.
  • (20) Nonetheless, the NSA persuaded Erwin Griswold, the former dean of Harvard law school, the then solicitor general of the United States, to knowingly lie to the United States supreme court that it was still a secret.

Undermine


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To excavate the earth beneath, or the part of, especially for the purpose of causing to fall or be overthrown; to form a mine under; to sap; as, to undermine a wall.
  • (v. t.) Fig.: To remove the foundation or support of by clandestine means; to ruin in an underhand way; as, to undermine reputation; to undermine the constitution of the state.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Their efforts will include blocking the NSA from undermining encryption and barring other law enforcement agencies from collecting US data in bulk.
  • (2) And any Labour commitment on spending is fatally undermined by their deficit amnesia.” Davey widened the attack on the Tories, following a public row this week between Clegg and Theresa May over the “snooper’s charter”, by accusing his cabinet colleague Eric Pickles of coming close to abusing his powers by blocking new onshore developments against the wishes of some local councils.
  • (3) Chadwick felt that Customs and Trading Standards needed to continue their war on illegal tobacco – if not, efforts to tackle smoking could be undermined.
  • (4) But for decades now there has been a systematic undermining of it [the NHS’s] core values.
  • (5) The government also faced considerable international political pressure, with the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, calling publicly on the government to "provide full redress to the victims, including fair and adequate compensation", and writing privately to David Cameron, along with two former special rapporteurs, to warn that the government's position was undermining its moral authority across the world.
  • (6) Like the doctor who makes a decision to operate without consulting the patient, I’m diminishing your autonomy by undermining it.
  • (7) There, the US Joint Commission, an independent, non-profit organisation that accredits healthcare organisations and programmes has issued a standard on “behaviours that undermine a culture of safety” to tackle “intimidating and disruptive behaviour at work”.
  • (8) Group B meningococcal vaccine consisting of the natural complex of specific polysaccharide and outer membrane protein (OMP) has been shown to be moderately reactogenic, safe with respect to the effect of undermining tolerance to human brain tissue antigens and to produce no allergization of humans.
  • (9) The end of the cold war and a reshaping of the threats faced by the UK had undermined the logic of nuclear deterrence strategy, he said.
  • (10) Then Greece has another chance.” But the intervention by the IMF will undermine EU leaders who argue Greece must submit to a fresh round of austerity measures to release funds for debt repayments.
  • (11) Entitled Jobs, Justice and Equity, the report warned that growing inequality, marginalisation and disenfranchisement are threatening Africa's prospects and undermining the foundations of its recent success.
  • (12) Umunna said: "Where you have pay awards that bear no relation to performance, but also can be beyond what a company can sustain, it really undermines trust in the whole system.
  • (13) The home team's defence had been undermined by naivety and it was in evidence when Stepanov, already on a yellow card for a foul on McGeady and having been played into trouble, lunged for the ball only to be beaten to it by Keane.
  • (14) The home secretary has been concerned that British involvement in the UN refugee programme would become an open-ended commitment that risked undermining the Tories' commitment to reduce net migration to the UK to tens of thousands by 2015.
  • (15) The Public Accounts committee (PAC) said on Thursday that the "chaos" surrounding the failure of G4S to provide enough staff for the Olympics had undermined confidence in Games organisers.
  • (16) Moreover, uncertainty about the resolution of these fiscal issues could itself undermine business and household confidence," said Bernanke.
  • (17) The clashes between the moralistic Levin and his friend Oblonsky, sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry, and Levin's linkage of modernity to Oblonsky's attitudes – that social mores are to be worked around and subordinated to pleasure, that families are base camps for off-base nooky – undermine one possible reading of Anna Karenina , in which Anna is a martyr in the struggle for the modern sexual freedoms that we take for granted, taken down by the hypocritical conservative elite to which she, her lover and her husband belong.
  • (18) James Cleverly, MP for Braintree, who supported Johnson’s aborted leadership bid before backing May, said joking about him risked undermining the foreign secretary.
  • (19) These effects of governmental restrictions on abortion do indeed interfere with the obstetrician's basic goal of providing optimal care for the patient and undermine their efforts to improve maternal and infant health.
  • (20) Poor crossing undermined Liverpool in the first leg, Klopp had claimed, but the flaw was remedied quickly in the return.