What's the difference between pontificate and preside?

Pontificate


Definition:

  • (n.) The state or dignity of a high priest; specifically, the office of the pope.
  • (n.) The term of office of a pontiff.
  • (v. i.) To perform the duty of a pontiff.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Highlighting an excerpt of the interview, which Harri claimed was "implying the mayor is 'losing his touch' because he 'failed' to upstage the PM", he criticised the decision to allow Purnell to "pontificate without challenge, qualification or allowing us a right to reply" and described the author as someone who "knows no one in No 10".
  • (2) RDE: I wouldn't expect the head of Oxfam to subsist on gruel, but I'd like charity workers to see their jobs as vocations rather than a well-paid career providing both generous financial rewards and the opportunity to pontificate from the moral high ground.
  • (3) The group’s trip to Rome is designed to coincide with a workshop hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Tuesday called Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity, which will feature speeches by Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs.
  • (4) If she genuinely can't understand that, there is little point her pontificating on any of the minutiae of the free market system nor the political or economic world at large.
  • (5) But in a setback, the US embassy found that its closest ally on GM, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the powerful Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the man who mostly represents the pope at the United Nations, had withdrawn his support for the US.
  • (6) The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel's onslaught on Gaza, you'd think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power.
  • (7) Emilio Sáenz-Francés, professor of history and international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, says Spain will suffer internally and externally as long as the political paralysis endures.
  • (8) Prime among these is Katie Hopkins, a former Apprentice contestant who now writes a column for the Sun and pontificates on daytime TV, appearing on the This Morning sofa as regularly as an untreated cold sore.
  • (9) In one of the longest, most passionate and sweeping speeches of his pontificate, the Argentine-born pope used his visit to Bolivia to ask forgiveness for the sins committed by the Roman Catholic church in its treatment of native Americans during what he called the “so-called conquest of America”.
  • (10) Emilio Sáenz-Francés, a professor of history and international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, said that while the central government may have succeeded in watering down Sunday’s vote, it had done little to address the underlying grassroots movement pushing for independence.
  • (11) The meeting was arranged by the Argentine head of the pontifical academy, Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, a good friend of the pope’s.
  • (12) I’m here to talk about trade not to pontificate on other issues.
  • (13) But she says now that she'd been doing interviews all day, "then somehow, I started liking the sound of my own voice pontificating.
  • (14) But Guzmán Carriquiry, vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and a friend of the pope’s, suggested at a recent conference in Philadelphia that the pope would try to present a more nuanced understanding of the US, including in his discussion of economics.
  • (15) But she thought it might also indicate that the Vatican "may ... be pulling back due to concerns about ITF pressure to declassify records from the WWII-era pontificate of Pope Pius XII".
  • (16) The 77-year-old former archbishop of Buenos Aires will be the fifth pope to meet the Queen, who first visited the Vatican as Princess Elizabeth during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.
  • (17) Any commentator who speaks of “Ireland” (26 counties thereof) gaining “independence” (sic) whole ignoring the fact that almost one million of its citizens are now trapped in a gerrymandered United Kingdom statelet in which they want no part of, nor ever wanted, shouldn’t be pontificating on Scottish independence .
  • (18) Fourteen-year-olds pontificating on this must be making the old field marshal turn in his grave, and this debate also perpetuates the myth that British soldiers were "lions led by donkeys", the idea that the brave ordinary Tommy was let down by the brandy-soaked toffs in charge.
  • (19) The big bang, which is today posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creation; rather, it requires it,” the pope said in an address to a meeting at the pontifical academy of sciences.
  • (20) The crowd of excitable young and young-ish people gathered to hear him pontificate believe what he’s saying, even if he doesn’t.

Preside


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To be set, or to sit, in the place of authority; to occupy the place of president, chairman, moderator, director, etc.; to direct, control, and regulate, as chief officer; as, to preside at a public meeting; to preside over the senate.
  • (v. i.) To exercise superintendence; to watch over.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In early 2000, during the first months of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, Babitsky was kidnapped by Russian forces and disappeared for many weeks.
  • (2) All former US presidents set up a library in their name to house their papers and honour their legacy.
  • (3) In platform shoes to emulate Johnson's height, and with the aid of prosthetic earlobes, Cranston becomes the 36th president: he bullies and cajoles, flatters and snarls and barks, tells dirty jokes or glows with idealism as required, and delivers the famous "Johnson treatment" to everyone from Martin Luther King to the racist Alabama governor George Wallace.
  • (4) He was very touched that President Nicolas Sarkozy came out to the airport to meet us, even after Madiba retired.
  • (5) In fact, you might read it as a signal … that the president might well lose on this,” she said.
  • (6) To become president of Afghanistan , Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai changed his wardrobe and modified his name, gave up coffee, embraced a man he once denounced as a “known killer” and even toyed with anger management classes to tame a notorious temper.
  • (7) They have actively intervened with governments, and particularly so in Africa.” José Luis Castro, president and chief executive officer of Vital Strategies, an organisation that promotes public health in developing countries, said: “The danger of tobacco is not an old story; it is the present.
  • (8) Both former presidents Bush have said they will sit out the 2016 campaign, as has former presidential candidate Jeb Bush.
  • (9) Cas reduced it further to four, but the decision effectively ends Platini’s career as a football administrator because – as he pointedly noted – it rules him out of standing for the Fifa presidency in 2019.
  • (10) Herman Van Rompuy, the European Council president chairing the summit, hoped to finesse an overall agreement on the banking supervisor.
  • (11) "For a better world, not only for the Iranian people but for the next generation across the globe, I earnestly hope that President Rouhani will receive a warm welcome and meaningful responses during his visit to the UN."
  • (12) Western diplomats acknowledge that the capture of Qusair is likely to have emboldened President Bashar al-Assad , making him less likely to consider concessions – let alone stepping down.
  • (13) Companies had made investments in certain energy sources, the president said, so change could be “uncomfortable and difficult”.
  • (14) I am rooting hard for you.” Ronald Reagan simply told his former vice-president Bush: “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.” By 10.30am Michelle Obama and Melania Trump will join the outgoing and incoming presidents in a presidential limousine to drive to the Capitol.
  • (15) One might expect that a similar news spike and rebounding of support for stricter gun control can happen, given President Obama's new push.
  • (16) To safeguard its long-time regional ally, Iran gave full political, economic and military backing to the embattled Syrian president.
  • (17) The lies Trump told this week: from murder rates to climate change Read more “President Obama has commuted the sentences of record numbers of high-level drug traffickers.
  • (18) But to treat a mistake as an automatic disqualification for advancement – even as heinous a mistake as presiding over a botched operation that resulted in the killing of an innocent man – could be depriving organisations, and the country, of leaders who have been tested and will not make the same mistake again.
  • (19) It certainly isn’t a good time for the association but we as a team are insisting on this being cleared up transparently and Wolfgang Niersbach, as president, is part of that.
  • (20) Bob Farnsworth, president of Nashville, Tennessee-based Hummingbird Productions, told trade publication Variety that the film was set for release in 2015 and would star Karolyn Grimes, who played George Bailey's daughter in the original film.