What's the difference between plight and promise?

Plight


Definition:

  • () imp. & p. p. of Plight, to pledge.
  • () imp. & p. p. of Pluck.
  • (v. t.) To weave; to braid; to fold; to plait.
  • (n.) A network; a plait; a fold; rarely a garment.
  • (n.) That which is exposed to risk; that which is plighted or pledged; security; a gage; a pledge.
  • (n.) Condition; state; -- risk, or exposure to danger, often being implied; as, a luckless plight.
  • (n.) To pledge; to give as a pledge for the performance of some act; as, to plight faith, honor, word; -- never applied to property or goods.
  • (n.) To promise; to engage; to betroth.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Now, a small Scottish charity, Edinburgh Direct Aid – moved by their plight and aware that the language of Lebanese education is French and English and that Syria is Arabic – is delivering textbooks in Arabic to the school and have offered to fund timeshare projects across the country.
  • (2) A 76-year-old British national has been held in an Iranian jail for more than four years and convicted of spying, his family has revealed, as they seek to draw attention to the plight of a man they describe as one of the “oldest and loneliest prisoners in Iran”.
  • (3) A prominent gay rights activist, Nikolai Alexeev, said although Fry's letter "won't change anything" at the Olympics, it would help raise awareness of the plight of LGBT Russians.
  • (4) Greece's desperate plight hovers over the meeting, although formally there is no mention of Greece on the agenda or in the statements drafted for the meeting.
  • (5) Persistent media highlighting of the plight of patients suffering from severe fatigue of unknown cause (postviral fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis) has at last been matched by professional attention.
  • (6) "But if it keeps their plight and the plight of the Arctic in the press, I think she would be happy to do it."
  • (7) What he didn’t foresee was that getting to know people more intimately would result in his using portraits – more than 130 so far – to raise awareness of the plight of chronic homelessness generally or that he would become passionately vocal about what has been an entrenched issue for a number of US cities for decades.
  • (8) Sting – a man who had split the Police to pursue a more adult-oriented career, and who would in the following year ponder such poptastic issues as how much Russians loved their children and the plight of miners – took that job in 1984, while this year it falls to Guy Garvey, who may as well just change his middle name to 6Music.
  • (9) Victims of the Great Depression were there in plain sight, the unemployed queuing up in breadlines, their plight unambiguous.
  • (10) Qatar had vowed to reform the industry after the Guardian exposed the desperate plight of many of its migrant workers last year.
  • (11) I keep going and going and going.” 17) Being ahead of the curve July 2008: Two years before the Qatar vote, addresses the plight of exploited workers denied liveable pay and conditions.
  • (12) The legitimate focus on the plight of refugees on Nauru has overshadowed the impact of Australian policies on that island nation, a closely integrated society of just 10,000 people.
  • (13) Last week the International Consortium of British Pensioners (ICBP), which represents expat campaigning groups in Australia and Canada, launched its new Pension Justice website , aimed at highlighting their plight.
  • (14) Few measures have elicited more anger – or ingenious forms of revolt – than the property tax announced by Greek ministers to plug a budget black hole that might have gone unnoticed had Greece's plight not threatened the entire eurozone.
  • (15) With 73,000 people killed and large parts of its cities and villages destroyed in the north by the disaster, the plight of 2.5 million people left homeless hung in the balance.
  • (16) They seem to be unaware of the plight of this particular group of British savers.
  • (17) We have long been campaigning on the issue of income drawdown restrictions and so are pleased to see the government taking heed of the plight of these savers.
  • (18) But the strike proved a seminal moment in the British labour movement, drawing attention to the overlooked plight of female migrant workers – and generating admiration for Desai's tenacity.
  • (19) As for Aloisi's plight, Popovic declined to offer advice.
  • (20) Restrictions on local news agencies and newspapers seem to have eased recently with a few going as far as breaking the taboo on reporting the plight of political prisoners or the house arrests of opposition leaders.

Promise


Definition:

  • (a.) In general, a declaration, written or verbal, made by one person to another, which binds the person who makes it to do, or to forbear to do, a specified act; a declaration which gives to the person to whom it is made a right to expect or to claim the performance or forbearance of a specified act.
  • (a.) An engagement by one person to another, either in words or in writing, but properly not under seal, for the performance or nonperformance of some particular thing. The word promise is used to denote the mere engagement of a person, without regard to the consideration for it, or the corresponding duty of the party to whom it is made.
  • (a.) That which causes hope, expectation, or assurance; especially, that which affords expectation of future distinction; as, a youth of great promise.
  • (a.) Bestowal, fulfillment, or grant of what is promised.
  • (v. t.) To engage to do, give, make, or to refrain from doing, giving, or making, or the like; to covenant; to engage; as, to promise a visit; to promise a cessation of hostilities; to promise the payment of money.
  • (v. t.) To afford reason to expect; to cause hope or assurance of; as, the clouds promise rain.
  • (v. t.) To make declaration of or give assurance of, as some benefit to be conferred; to pledge or engage to bestow; as, the proprietors promised large tracts of land; the city promised a reward.
  • (v. i.) To give assurance by a promise, or binding declaration.
  • (v. i.) To afford hopes or expectation; to give ground to expect good; rarely, to give reason to expect evil.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Yet the Tory promise of fiscal rectitude prevailed in England Alexander had been in charge of Labour’s election strategy, but he could not strategise a victory over a 20-year-old Scottish nationalist who has not yet taken her finals.
  • (2) The HTCA is promising as a potential tool for studying the biology of tumors.
  • (3) David Cameron last night hit out at his fellow world leaders after the G8 dropped the promise to meet the historic aid commitments made at Gleneagles in 2005 from this year's summit communique.
  • (4) The success in these two infertile patients who had already undergone lengthy psychotherapy is promising.
  • (5) Measuring this value therefore is a very promising procedure.
  • (6) The Coalition promises to add more misery to their lives.
  • (7) Meanwhile Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, waiting anxiously for news of the scale of the Labour advance in his first nationwide electoral test, will urge the electorate not to be duped by the promise of a coalition mark 2, predicting sham concessions by the Conservatives .
  • (8) John Lewis’s marketing, advertising and reputation are all built on their promises of good customer services, and it is a large part of what still drives people to their stores despite cheaper online outlets.
  • (9) On the basis of reports in the literature and of our own clinical experience it appears that melanocyte inhibiting factor (MIF) is a very promising therapeutic agent in the management of Parkinson's disease.
  • (10) Since the employment of microwave energy for defrosting biological tissues and for microwave-aided diagnosis in cryosurgery is very promising, the problem of ensuring the match between the contact antennas (applicators) and the frozen biological object has become a pressing one.
  • (11) The 20-25 year-old cohort was found to yield the most promising results; however, a statistical difference was not found to exist using the volume or area.
  • (12) The arrest of the Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian and his journalist wife, Yeganeh Salehi, as well as a photographer and her partner, is a brutal reminder of the distance between President Hassan Rouhani’s reforming promises and his willingness to act.
  • (13) The use of a new ultraviolet laser combined with a holographic grating spectrograph promises to increase the number of fluorescing species that can be detected simultaneously.
  • (14) So is the mock courtroom promising “justice and fairness”.
  • (15) But that promise was beginning to startle the markets, which admire Monti’s appetite for austerity and fear the free spending and anti-European views of some Italian politicians.
  • (16) Healthbars such as Nakd fit this category and promise to deliver one of your five a day, based on the quantity of freeze-dried date paste used.
  • (17) The most promising method was chemoradiotherapy using multifractionation of a daily dose of irradiation, the 4-year survival rate of 20% being achieved.
  • (18) Trials of these therapeutic schemes promise a higher efficacy of the therapeutic measures for gastroesophageal reflux.
  • (19) The glory lay in the defiance, although the outcome of the tie scarcely looks promising for Arsenal when the return at Camp Nou next Tuesday is borne in mind.
  • (20) One of the big sticking points is cash – with rich countries so far failing to live up to promise to mobilise $100bn a year by 2020 for climate finance .