What's the difference between pious and reverential?

Pious


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to piety; exhibiting piety; reverential; dutiful; religious; devout; godly.
  • (a.) Practiced under the pretext of religion; prompted by mistaken piety; as, pious errors; pious frauds.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) © Focus Features Where Dolly, a kind, pious, modest, anxious figure, the mother of five living and two dead children, belongs very much to the old Russia, Stiva Oblonsky, her husband, is recognisable as the caricature of a modern man.
  • (2) It is of course important that migrants are not scapegoated; but such pious deceit from comfortable middle-class commentators can only provoke the unemployed, the low-paid and the homeless.
  • (3) Still, I like to believe that these small-scale ventures, too, make some contribution to a conversation without limits or proscriptions; the sine qua non of the sort of society that knows to keep the solemn and the pious at bay.
  • (4) Many Isis fighters are newly converted, newly pious ... these men have grown a beard in three months and they don’t give Islam time to be understood.” He is tired of having to defend his religion against bigots who take these instant Islamists to be the authentic representation of Islam.
  • (5) The president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, made it a vote about his “way”, and found himself rejected by a large group of “democrat” voters – and almost completely abandoned by his long-term allies: pious Kurds.
  • (6) In that same National season, he teamed with Simon Callow (as Face) and Josie Lawrence (as Doll Common) in a co-production by Bill Alexander for the Birmingham Rep of Ben Jonson’s trickstering, two-faced masterpiece The Alchemist ; he was a comically pious Subtle in sackcloth and sandals.
  • (7) Both harangued Brian from the outset calling it "a squalid little film" and "tenth rate"; no amount of measured argument on the Pythons part would dissuade the pious double act of their firmly held belief that Life of Brian mocked Christ.
  • (8) He's obviously a true believer in democracy – which sounds rather pious, but it's a fact.
  • (9) Tories are furious and bitter at being abandoned by the Lib Dems, whom they loathe anyway as a bunch of pious creeps.
  • (10) Those who claim that conversion or rejection of faith is punishable by death are effectively - and this ought to give their pious hearts pause for reflection - usurping powers reserved solely for God.
  • (11) Burns is, according to the poet Edwin Muir, "to the respectable, a decent man; to the Rabelaisian, bawdy; to the sentimentalist, sentimental; to the socialist, a revolutionary; to the nationalist, a patriot; to the religious, pious …" So no doubt, this January at the start of referendum year , even diehard unionists will be searching around for words of his that seem to support their position and, where they can extrapolate them, sprinkling them around with abandon to salt their haggis, neeps and tatties at Burns suppers the length and breadth of the land.
  • (12) We simply cannot wait in the pious hope that short-term-minded governments and enterprises will save us There is a clear answer to the question of each country’s reasonable share, based on a permissible quantum of emissions per capita that never threatens the perilous 2C mean temperature increase that would profoundly and irreversibly affect all life on earth.
  • (13) The reticent, pious, even priggish character was too alien, possibly repellant, for the writer and director of the 1999 film version, Patricia Rozema, who drew on Austen's letters to fabricate another creature altogether.
  • (14) Against this background it is very simple to make such pious and ill-considered statements as, “If they don’t want to go to jail, they shouldn’t break the law!” Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘We represent only 2.4% of the Australian population yet account for more than 25% of the prison population.’ Photograph: AAP Against this background, it is very simple to impose policies for Indigenous Australians that do not signal any sense of belief in our humanity and own capacity to rise above the challenges we are confronted by.
  • (15) What we have too in Sister Cristina is the singing nun as a cultural idea: the pious, virginal creature emerging from behind strict convent walls to charm the world with the power of her voice.
  • (16) Early speculation suggested the twice-divorced businessman – who once cited the verse “two Corinthians” rather than the correct “second Corinthians” during his campaign and said he had never sought forgiveness for his sins – could not capture the vote of the pious.
  • (17) Like The Guard, Calvary is tartly, tightly scripted; unlike it, it's a pious piece of work, a serious investigation of expiation.
  • (18) This pious art lover could have a career in slapstick if she wants, for her comic destruction of a work of art bears comparison with Rowan Atkinson giving Whistler's Mother a badly drawn cartoon face in the film Bean .
  • (19) Sometimes we are not quite sure that this way of life is pious enough.
  • (20) "I saw Jonathan, who comes over as a very nice, humble, pious person," said Selby.

Reverential


Definition:

  • (a.) Proceeding from, or expressing, reverence; having a reverent quality; reverent; as, reverential fear or awe.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Film-makers appear increasingly willing to use very recent events and are perhaps less reverential than past directors.
  • (2) When, exactly, did the work "dark" become a reverential compliment, as opposed to merely a neutral description?
  • (3) Recent television versions, Gatiss fears, have been too reverential and too slow.
  • (4) He talked about it in very reverential terms, like these were sacred documents.
  • (5) I'm afraid I didn't enjoy either Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds – they were too self-reverential for my taste – but, as a writer, nobody in the world has a better ear for the foibles and vulnerabilities of his bad guys than Tarantino.
  • (6) We know how profoundly significant and sensitive this matter is to victims’ families, especially those whose loved ones have yet to be identified,” the museum’s management says in a section about the repository on its website, adding that the medical examiner’s office believes “this new repository will provide a dignified and reverential setting for the remains to repose – temporarily or in perpetuity – as identifications continue to be made.” The city officials said that they consulted with some victims’ relatives before going ahead with the plan.
  • (7) Forgive the return to a familiar furrow, but why is it that on the relatively rare occasions these titans concede to interviews, they barely seem to be interrogated, and are spoken to instead in the reverential and admiring tones normally reserved for inventors or eccentric scientists?
  • (8) If Mullah Saheb is dead, there will be 1,000 other Mullah Sahebs,” he said, using a reverential term for the cleric.
  • (9) Louis, though, is something of a special case among comedians at the moment, spoken about in hushed, reverential terms by other comics: Patton Oswalt has likened the experience of watching him do stand-up to seeing Richard Pryor at his peak, while longtime friend and collaborator Chris Rock, one of the many famous faces who appear in Louie, describes CK as "some kid I used to beat up" who has suddenly become "Jimi Hendrix" .
  • (10) We might start treating our knackered old Nissans more like those classic cars that hobbyists spend long nights reverentially restoring in order to drive them very slowly, while wearing special gloves, to country pubs at weekends.
  • (11) The role has defeated actors as varied as Danny Glover (in the 1987 TV film Mandela), Sidney Poitier (Mandela and de Klerk, 1997, also for TV) and Dennis Haysbert (Goodbye Bafana, 2007), in vehicles that were reverential and mostly forgettable.
  • (12) That’s great for selling me a product like Apartments.com or any number of self-reverential cameos in movies and TV shows, but can you ever take the man seriously in an actual movie that requires him to play a real character?
  • (13) David was mainly interested in political influence, and despised the commercialism of Kemsley, whose Sunday Times was conservative and printed reverential editorials about the royal family in italics.
  • (14) The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw labelled it a "reverential and sentimental biopic … laced with bizarre cardboard dialogue – a tabloid fantasy of how famous and important people speak in private".
  • (15) They speak in reverential tones of his Easterhouse epiphany : the moment in 2002 when he saw the poverty on a Glasgow estate, brushed a manly tear from his eye and vowed to end the "dependency culture" that kept the poor jobless.
  • (16) Australians would be foolish to lapse into alliance sentimentality, invoking Anzus mantras with, what Paul Keating has called, a “reverential and sacramental” tone.
  • (17) At this stage in Corbyn’s journey, endless references to The Mandate are beginning to sound creepily reverential.
  • (18) It would be sad to see this titan felled by Florentino Pérez at some point in the future but perhaps he is held in such high regard by the club that his reverential status will remain intact whatever happens to the team under his watch.
  • (19) Reverential tour guides escort small groups past Count Tolstoy's duck pond and up an avenue of high trees.
  • (20) That was felt to be too dry and reverential in contrast to ITV.