What's the difference between plaint and plaintive?

Plaint


Definition:

  • (n.) Audible expression of sorrow; lamentation; complaint; hence, a mournful song; a lament.
  • (n.) An accusation or protest on account of an injury.
  • (n.) A private memorial tendered to a court, in which a person sets forth his cause of action; the exhibiting of an action in writing.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He suggests that this is the dynamic that drives unthinking partisan allegiance ("What's most distinctive about the current presidential election and our political culture [is] … how unconditionally so many partisans back their side's every edict, plaint and stratagem"), as well as numerous key political frauds, from Saddam's WMDs to Obama's fake birth certificate to Romney's failure to pay taxes for 10 years.
  • (2) Ellie, by email As Ellie has perceptively summed up in her plaint, it would be easier to bring about peace in the Middle East this autumn than to find a fashion magazine that is not pushing pink coats.
  • (3) "Let us quit this indecent exercise of fatuous plaints, including raising hopes, even now, with talk of 'posthumous' conferment, when you know damned well that the Nobel committee does not indulge in such tradition.
  • (4) These consist either of slow- or delayed-release formulations of plaint 5-ASA (mesalazin) or sulpha-free azo-compounds of 5-ASA.
  • (5) This is not a plaint of the quasi-misogynistic and homophobic ones that have appeared in other, inferior rags, which can be summed up as "Liz 'That dress' Hurley turned Shane into a big queen".
  • (6) This is why it is worth carrying out.” Wilde was ever-dedicated to paradox – but this was one he sought to resolve with the familiar plaint: “Human nature will change.
  • (7) BALT magic catheter (PURSIL catheter) is a new catheter which is more flexible and plaint than the TRACKER-18 catheter because its mid-section and distal portion are made from polyurethane and silicon rather than polyethylene.
  • (8) They quote Sennett's plaint, "how can long-term purposes be pursued in a short-term society … how can a human being develop a narrative of identity and life history in a society composed of episodes and fragments".

Plaintive


Definition:

  • (n.) Repining; complaining; lamenting.
  • (n.) Expressive of sorrow or melancholy; mournful; sad.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) 3.46pm: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: Leveson asks Cameron plaintively for political consensus to get reforms through; the PM agrees.
  • (2) Facebook Twitter Pinterest More critical is Desculpa Neymar (Sorry Neymar) a plaintive critique by Edu Krieger that highlights some of the grievances of the anti-World Cup protests that have taken place across the country since last year.
  • (3) A quarter of a century after I was hanging around Brent Cross, I was one of the team at the New Economics Foundation on the Clone Town Britain campaign, a plaintive cry against everywhere looking the same.
  • (4) Mirrors (2016) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Over plaintive piano and a slurry of Trump misogyny, a group of young girls comb their hair before a question is posed.
  • (5) Without naming and shaming, during the USA's game against Portugal, I saw one leftwing tweeter ask with plaintive, stony-faced sincerity "how can anyone be supporting the imperialists?"
  • (6) One senior lieutenant made a plaintive call for funds.
  • (7) Indeed, the running message of the black spider letters is not potency but a plaintive sigh of woe at a world going to the dogs.
  • (8) The first plaintive cries for Rooney to be brought on could be heard late in the first half.
  • (9) It’s a fight between what I know my country should be and what I see it turning into, which is the plaintive cry of all American millennials.
  • (10) And she had just one plaintive answer when I asked how she was.
  • (11) David Cameron asked plaintively more than once at prime minister's questions.
  • (12) The news that Facebook has splurged $2bn (£1.2bn) on buying Oculus Rift , the world's first really viable virtual reality headset, has set off waves of plaintive snark in the world of videogames.
  • (13) asked the Irish Times plaintively, evoking the poetry of WB Yeats from 1913 to grieve over the surrender of Irish sovereignty to a bunch of IMF and ECB accountants.
  • (14) Search and update are not the same Many a high-profile tweeter has confused the "search" and "update status" boxes, leading to such horrors as @edballsmp's plaintive "ed balls".
  • (15) The centre posted some before-and-after pictures, along with a plaintive message confirming that someone had recently been up to no good with a brush.
  • (16) "We need your help," begins the plaintive ad on the front of the Whitehaven News.
  • (17) There were old men and women, too feeble to walk, who were placed in carts; the younger members of the community on foot were carrying their bundles of clothes … while the children, with looks of alarm, walked alongside … A cry of grief went up to heaven, the long plaintive wail, like a funeral coronach, was resumed … the sound re-echoed through the wide valley of Strath in one prolonged note of desolation".
  • (18) When Republicans repeatedly get on stage at their national convention and toss attack after attack at my mom,” she wrote in a plaintive letter to supporters, “calling her things I’d never say in front of my children – let alone on live TV – they’re talking about a caricature they’ve imagined, not the woman I love and respect.” As he sought to appear more presidential, even the GOP’s nominee, Donald Trump , seemed embarrassed by the baying crowd, waving aside demands for Clinton’s incarceration with hands that encouraged the mob instead to chant “USA!
  • (19) he marvels plaintively, pretending to find such interest in him unfathomable. "
  • (20) The centre posted some graphic before-and-after pictures, along with a plaintive message confirming that someone had recently been up to no good with a brush.