What's the difference between pious and scrupulous?

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.

Scrupulous


Definition:

  • (a.) Full ofscrupules; inclined to scruple; nicely doubtful; hesitating to determine or to act, from a fear of offending or of doing wrong.
  • (a.) Careful; cautious; exact; nice; as, scrupulous abstinence from labor; scrupulous performance of duties.
  • (a.) Given to making objections; captious.
  • (a.) Liable to be doubted; doubtful; nice.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Life-threatening or lethal toxicity was encountered when these phenomena were not scrupulously observed.
  • (2) Invariably in these films the visuals are scrupulously authentic, but the "message" is very much in line with the values of their human creators.
  • (3) A plea is made for scrupulous care to avoid starch powder contamination of the operative field.
  • (4) And yet, according to his widow Sheila Ravenscroft, this photograph documents the first stage in a complicated and scrupulous filing system that Peel had maintained for his record collection since 1969.
  • (5) He is always scrupulous to keep his views to himself and enjoys the respect of politicians of all stripes, who recognise the skills of a top operator.
  • (6) Bernie Sanders has scrupulously avoided throwing punches at political rivals during a career that has lasted close to half a century .
  • (7) Telling an institution to “keep its mouth shut” is, quite simply, a threat – entirely different from expressing the hope that the media might want to temper its criticism and scrupulously check its facts.
  • (8) However, he added: “We are going to be scrupulous in investigating cases where we are concerned about the impartiality and accountability that is taking place.” Earlier this week, Obama hosted a White House summit to deal with the fallout from the unrest in Ferguson and concerns about police brutality and stereotyping that the president said have resonated in communities across the country.
  • (9) Infection is a potential risk in diabetic men using intracavernosal injection therapy and those offered it should be informed of the importance of a scrupulous sterile technique and the need to seek urgent medical help for decompression if an erection persists for more than 4-6 h.
  • (10) Of course, even though we brights will scrupulously insist that our word is a noun, if it catches on it is likely to follow gay and eventually re-emerge as a new adjective.
  • (11) This favourable series demonstrates that nowadays with the improved technology and with a scrupulous pharmacological protocol transluminal coronary angioplasty can be performed with a low incidence of complications and excellent results, further assessing its high potential in the treatment of ischemic coronary artery disease.
  • (12) Even with the most scrupulous IUD insertion technics, uterine perforation is a recognized complication.
  • (13) The live footage on the sports channel ESPN was scrupulously presented in line with post-Reithian attitudes to the depiction of private crisis: as soon as it became apparent that Muamba was in extremis, the camera pulled back to a long, high angle, which showed only a distant huddle.
  • (14) These findings indicate the importance of scrupulous hand washing before and after handling each infant and of enforcement of other basic nursery techniques.
  • (15) One critic, for example, in a very patient, and indeed in every respect but one a positively scrupulous, reading of one of Eliot's anti-semitic poems, "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar," glancingly commented, "the question whether [it is] anti-semitic is obviously not a pressing one".
  • (16) From analysis of the results of scrupulous examination of 66 patients with pathological shadows up to 3 cm in diameter found in the lungs during X-ray examination the authors established that peripheral carcinoma of the lung accounts for 65.2% of all asymptomatic accidentally revealed structures in the lungs.
  • (17) In the absence of added Mg2+ untreated tRNA was acylated in the presence of spermine, but tRNA from which Mg2+ had been scrupulously removed was not.
  • (18) Each stone is then carefully cleaned by hand and scrupulously recorded before being put into storage.
  • (19) The results of our study indicate that a more scrupulous enforcement of legislative measures concerning anti-tetanus vaccination is recommended.
  • (20) Recommended biography Wodehouse: A Life by Robert McCrum (2004) is a masterly study of Wodehouse's achievement, and includes a scrupulous and clear-eyed examination of the wartime scandal which dispenses with much of the accumulated hyperbole.