What's the difference between plaint and pliant?

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".

Pliant


Definition:

  • (v.) Capable of plying or bending; readily yielding to force or pressure without breaking; flexible; pliable; lithe; limber; plastic; as, a pliant thread; pliant wax. Also used figuratively: Easily influenced for good or evil; tractable; as, a pliant heart.
  • (v.) Favorable to pliancy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But it helped that he faced only one opponent, that a pliant local media portrayed support for Sisi as a patriotic duty, and that the election came amid a continuing crackdown on all forms of opposition.
  • (2) For these sites thin and pliant fasciocutaneous flaps are ideal tissue transfers, and we favour the radial forearm flap which is raised from the distal volar forearm.
  • (3) In several instances in which preadenoidectomy mechanical obstruction of the Eustachian tube was not demonstrated, the tube appeared to have been made more pliant by the operation.
  • (4) "For the most part the rewards for acquiescing to GOC demands are risible: pomp-full dinners and meetings and, for the most pliant, a photo op with one of the Castro brothers.
  • (5) The chancellor, George Osborne, and health secretary Jeremy Hunt would be very happy to devolve these political hot potatoes to pliant and cash-strapped local bodies.
  • (6) Putin also said outside forces would use intelligence services, the media and non-governmental organisations to destabilise Russia and make it "pliant in deciding issues in favour of the interests of other governments".
  • (7) "For 40 years the tobacco companies were able to persuade pliant politicians within their grip to tell the public what they wanted them to tell them, and for 40 years the tragedy continued," Gore told ABC TV's 7.30 program from Los Angeles on Wednesday night.
  • (8) President Asif Ali Zardari has vowed to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida, but cuts an increasingly forlorn figure because he is seen as too pliant to the US in a country where anti-American sentiment is high.
  • (9) Like maths and music, languages sink in faster and deeper before concerns about sex and jobs besiege the pliant brain.
  • (10) If one interrupts that sort of pliant texture operatively-unless their is an urgent indication-unprofitable results must be expected, which correspond to orthopedic experiences.
  • (11) While the fashion press and the beauty industry remain invested in the idea of young women as pliant, affable and terminally anxious about getting boys to like them, real women and girls are fighting back against a culture that persists in trying to present our desires and rebrand our politics as fluffy and marketable.
  • (12) Those courts once had a reputation for independence, but that changed under Mubarak, who made changes to personnel and to the rules on the appointment of judges which over time left mainly pliant men on the bench, ready either to take “guidance” on cases or to accommodate what they imagined would be the government’s desires.
  • (13) Critics have accused Erdogan of seeking to diminish the importance of the Turkish parliament and also seeking to make the independent judiciary far more pliant.
  • (14) Some fear his next move will be to go after Jega, the electoral chief, and replace him with someone more pliant.
  • (15) The distal flap is thin and pliant due to the small amount of subcutaneous tissue and the fairly long vascular pedicle.
  • (16) It is a comfortable-seeming thing, flexible without being adjustable, giving without being pliant.
  • (17) To keep its grip, the regime uses its network of personal and official ties to Britain’s too pliant monarchy, to gullible congressional politicians, and to business and investment leaders overly impressed by its $1tn (£660bn) in cash reserves and its global investment portfolio.
  • (18) Tolokonnikova has also continued to appeal against her guilty verdict through the Moscow court system, and is one step away from it reaching the country's pliant supreme court.
  • (19) For several years the Liberal Democrat side of the government, in which I served as Nick Clegg’s national security adviser, staved off the woefully unevidenced plan (hawked around Westminster by pliant ministers since 2008) for new powers to force internet companies to retain highly personal communications data (aka the “snooper’s charter”).
  • (20) The British media may be attacked for the weakness of its investigative reporting and the salaciousness and dodgy practices of the tabloids, but I would rather err on the side of a profession that is hard to control than one that is pliant.