What's the difference between pester and torment?

Pester


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To trouble; to disturb; to annoy; to harass with petty vexations.
  • (v. t.) To crowd together in an annoying way; to overcrowd; to infest.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The creation of Albion’s second goal was more artful, even if it started with Özil being pestered into surrendering possession near halfway.
  • (2) It was Tim, an archivist from Warners whom I had been pestering for years about trying to track down some long-lost film footage.
  • (3) They should not pressure children or pester parents to buy products, and promotional offers should be used with a "due sense of responsibility".
  • (4) The allegations are sure to concern many parents whose children are pestering them to buy the extensive range of Cars 2 toys launched to coincide with the movie, which hit UK cinema screens in July.
  • (5) Professional irritant Kenny Miller wins a corner down the right, with some incessant pestering.
  • (6) For a year I have been pestered with: "X has got Facebook.
  • (7) He kept pestering her, phoning and phoning and phoning her."
  • (8) But while the Christians are still pestering God, the end-of-daysers awaiting Armageddon, and the Aryan brothers proving the least convincing imaginable argument for the superiority of their race, things have changed quite drastically in porn, which has been even more vulnerable than cinema, TV or music to the predations of the internet.
  • (9) Kala-azar (KA), an enigmatic disease has resurged in India since 1970's after about a lull of 20 years, displaying its pestering nature.
  • (10) The band became pally with him and pestered for a support slot when his Black Pus project (another great name) came to town.
  • (11) After a bit of good-natured pestering, she agrees to sell all of us one drink so we can discuss the heady topic of race in America while slightly intoxicated.
  • (12) Artists don't stand next to their artwork in galleries pestering the public to part with their pound coins.
  • (13) For now he is determined to stick with his work in the building industry, despite his workmates pestering him for the odd Victoria sponge or carrot cake.
  • (14) Nine hours working as an exterminator takes a physical toll on the 45-year-old , who didn’t go to college, makes $33,000 a year, and relies on a steady swarm of pests to pester people in his 90% rural county.
  • (15) The new boss, Paul Pester, whose £1.6m outstanding bonuses from Lloyds are to be transferred to TSB, is also aiming for growth in current accounts, where it has only 4.2% market share despite having some 6% of high street branches.
  • (16) There are some innovative ideas about, he says, on ways of teaching children in school to wash their hands – in the hope that they will then go home and pester their parents to do the same.
  • (17) Joleon Lescott, who endured a torrid debut for Villa, and Micah Richards were pestered into errors in the opening minutes and the latter was especially relieved that Danny Drinkwater’s shot from 25 yards flew over the bar.
  • (18) Paul Pester, chief executive of TSB, said the branches that were closing were within 500 metres of another TSB branch and were part of the estate it inherited when it was carved out of Lloyds Banking Group last year.
  • (19) Pester said the bank had achieved its target of winning more than 6% of all new current accounts and those being switched between banks.
  • (20) Pester added that, of the 631 branches TSB started with, there were 15 locations where two or three branches were “within spitting distance of each other”.

Torment


Definition:

  • (n.) An engine for casting stones.
  • (n.) Extreme pain; anguish; torture; the utmost degree of misery, either of body or mind.
  • (n.) That which gives pain, vexation, or misery.
  • (v. t.) To put to extreme pain or anguish; to inflict excruciating misery upon, either of body or mind; to torture.
  • (v. t.) To pain; to distress; to afflict.
  • (v. t.) To tease; to vex; to harass; as, to be tormented with importunities, or with petty annoyances.
  • (v. t.) To put into great agitation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Her story is an incredible tale of triumph over tragedy: a tormented childhood during China's Cultural Revolution, detention and forced exile after exposing female infanticide – then glittering success as the head of a major US technology firm.
  • (2) "It is difficult to imagine the torment experienced by the vulnerable victims of crimes such as these.
  • (3) While his citizens were being beaten and tormented in illegal detention, spokesmen for the then prime minister, Tony Blair, declared: "The Italian police had a difficult job to do.
  • (4) Yet the removal of two in-form goalscorers who were tormenting West Ham – first Aaron Lennon and then Lukaku – afforded the visitors the initiative.
  • (5) 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".
  • (6) Corner to USA though... 1.33am BST 20 mins More tempo in the American play now, but Belgium intercept again, and Mirallas torments them down the Belgian right flank before hitting a low cross in that's hoofed safely clear.
  • (7) It cannot be right that anyone who has found the courage to escape their abusive or violent partner should be subjected to the stress and torment of being confronted and interrogated by them in any court.” Research by charity Women’s Aid suggests a quarter of women in family court proceedings have been cross-examined by an abusive former partner.
  • (8) Shin Dong-hyuk said he was tormented to see his father alive and speaking in the video released by Pyongyang in October.
  • (9) In a torment of frustration, Mohammed stood outside the governor's and threw a can of petrol over himself.
  • (10) More than a quarter of hospital beds are occupied by people with dementia (no surprise to anyone who has been in hospital recently, where wards are full of men and women in great anxiety and torment) and they tend to stay for longer-than-average periods of time.
  • (11) Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island whose bipartisan bill will ensure a three-month extension of the federal benefits program, told the Guardian the measure would stimulate the economy and alleviate what he called the “mental torment” suffered by those long-term unemployed who now feel abandoned.
  • (12) It was only his inflexible determination, the quality that had made him a great general, that mastered the torments of ill-health – sleepless nights, fear of dying – to articulate his account for a devoted American audience.
  • (13) The man who devised these torments has a passing resemblance to El Greco's emaciated saints.
  • (14) Arsenal had no riposte to the blue and white striped waves that tormented them all evening.
  • (15) Father Michael, so brilliantly played by Sean Bean , was tormented by one such moment: his decision not to answer the phone to Helen Oyenusi (Muna Otaru) when she called to ask that he calm down her son.
  • (16) Suárez played as through affronted by the suggestion he might have fitness issues, tormenting England’s defence on a night that finished as a personal ordeal for Steven Gerrard.
  • (17) So often did John torment his elder brother – because, grouchy alcoholic prick that he was, he hated to acknowledge a debt – one has to wonder if he cast Francis in a minor part in Young Mr Lincoln simply to let him witness, day after day, his own signature role being forever obliterated by Henry Fonda's entrancing new reading.
  • (18) Shawcross, however, maintains there was no bad intent and said for that reason he has not been tormenting himself about the moment he collided with Ramsey's right leg and left the teenager writhing in agony.
  • (19) Since his withdrawal from the music scene, Shields has earned a reputation as the latter-day Brian Wilson, a tormented genius unable to produce a successor to Loveless, the Pet Sounds of UK avant-rock.
  • (20) Adding to the torment for Rodgers was a 120-minute performance before hosting Manchester City in the Premier League on Sunday at noon.