What's the difference between preternatural and strange?

Preternatural


Definition:

  • (a.) Beyond of different from what is natural, or according to the regular course of things, but not clearly supernatural or miraculous; strange; inexplicable; extraordinary; uncommon; irregular; abnormal; as, a preternatural appearance; a preternatural stillness; a preternatural presentation (in childbirth) or labor.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) At the time she was preternaturally calm, though she did find her composure sometimes slipped at the hospital.
  • (2) Like Clinton and Reagan, he has been credited with being a formidably effective communicator, described as having "a preternatural gift for making the complex seem deceptively simple".
  • (3) The 52-year-old former teacher is portrayed in China as a sort of home-grown Donald Trump – ultra-ambitious and preternaturally gifted at navigating the country's vast network of "guanxi", or personal connections.
  • (4) Phyllis Dorothy James was born in Oxford in 1920 – a year that's doubly celebrated by crime aficionados, since it also heralded the dawning of the Golden Age of detective fiction , that interwar flowering of intricately plotted mysteries, in which the preternaturally shrewd detective is invited to pick his way through a liberal scattering of clues and red herrings, before confronting reader and murderer with his irrefutable conclusions in the final pages.
  • (5) "Ah just want to sort out the funeral," she blubbed at the preternaturally patient Chesney, overbite quivering like a hovercraft as the prospect of another 15 years of storylines involving the widow whimpering in her HMP Plot Device netball bib lumbered horrifyingly into view.
  • (6) Fecal diversion is ensured by a preternatural anus.
  • (7) But Lawrence's still, graceful performance as the preternaturally strong-willed teenager doggedly juggling the multiple roles she has been forced into – her siblings' mother, her mother's carer, her father's replacement – is so intriguing and emotionally compelling that you're likely to emerge feeling unexpectedly warmed up.
  • (8) April Bloomfield is small, preternaturally cheerful, and extremely single-minded.
  • (9) A paragon of common sense to supporters and a xenophobic sophist to critics, Peters, who is part Maori, is a "preternaturally charming old-stager", according to Jane Clifton, a political columnist for the weekly NZ Listener magazine.
  • (10) But though the naked mole rats do not immediately impress with grace and beauty, there are plenty of other characteristics in which they are almost preternaturally evolved; traits including extraordinary longevity and the apparent ability to avoid cancerous tumours, qualities that might yet make them man's best friend.
  • (11) For eight years, we have been represented by an elegant, well-spoken, funny, highly educated, moderate, morally upright, preternaturally calm black man.
  • (12) The most careful surgical technique, the guiding principles of which are outlined, is a prerequisite for the subsequent possibilities for correct care of preternatural anus and for preventing otherwise unavoidable complications.
  • (13) After his undergraduate degree - George Monbiot, a flatmate, remembers him being preternaturally collected and focused - Ferguson did postgraduate work at Oxford and then Cambridge, keeping himself financially afloat by writing leaders for the Daily Telegraph and book reviews for the Daily Mail under assumed names, before becoming a fellow, then professor of history at Oxford.
  • (14) It’s rather strange, swapping the craziness of the Edinburgh’s Royal Mile at festival time for the preternatural quiet of the Scottish parliament in early August: like being thrown out of a party.
  • (15) A more comprehensive organization of those with preternatural anus within the framework of the German Ilco and the establishment of preternatural anus clinics and therapists would be desirable.
  • (16) The effect of Xantinol nicotinate and of hyperosmolar solution upon colonic motility of man was examined in five patients with tranverse preternatural anus by means of intraluminal tonometry.
  • (17) Once the stage of extraperitoneal evasion of the sigmoid has been achieved for definitive preternatural anus, transsection is made of the aponeurosis of m. obliqu.
  • (18) Incontinence and incontinence of the preternatural anus were eliminated in the first operations using autologous autotransplanted sphincteroplasties.
  • (19) On a sunny morning in mid-July, Malalai School for Girls in Kabul is preternaturally quiet.
  • (20) The intervention in 18 patients was modified Gabriel's operation, in four patients combined with the modified method of sphincterolevatorplasty and in 4 patients--preternatural anus.

Strange


Definition:

  • (superl.) Belonging to another country; foreign.
  • (superl.) Of or pertaining to others; not one's own; not pertaining to one's self; not domestic.
  • (superl.) Not before known, heard, or seen; new.
  • (superl.) Not according to the common way; novel; odd; unusual; irregular; extraordinary; unnatural; queer.
  • (superl.) Reserved; distant in deportment.
  • (superl.) Backward; slow.
  • (superl.) Not familiar; unaccustomed; inexperienced.
  • (adv.) Strangely.
  • (v. t.) To alienate; to estrange.
  • (v. i.) To be estranged or alienated.
  • (v. i.) To wonder; to be astonished.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We knew it would be a strange match because they had to come out and play to win to finish third,” Benitez said afterwards.
  • (2) After friends heard that he was on them, Brumfield started observing something strange: “If we had people over to the Super Bowl or a holiday season party, I’d notice that my medicines would come up short, no matter how good friends they were.” Twice people broke into his house to get to the drugs.
  • (3) However, growing accustomed to “this strange atmosphere”, the Observer man became dazzled by Burgess’s “brilliance and charm”.
  • (4) Nonetheless some strange theories have been floated.
  • (5) The effect on milk yield, milk leucocyte concentration, and milk prolactin of dominance rank and introduction of "strange" cows into a group was studied.
  • (6) Perhaps strangely, it was the second remark that troubled me more than the possibility that humanity would be extinguished by my hand.
  • (7) "When I look at a lot of other bands, it does seem that we're the strange minority," says drummer, Jeremy Gara, who, with his standy-up hair and dishevelled clothes, seems the most old-school indie musician of them all.
  • (8) Britons certainly divided over that strange, heady Diana week in 1997 and again over how to mark the millennium.
  • (9) Having always voted Conservative, he says that Labour's increasing doubts about HS2 suggest that they may be more deserving of his vote, something that clearly feels very strange indeed.
  • (10) When you ask for the phone numbers or names or addresses they are, strangely, unavailable."
  • (11) The banalities of a news conference take on a strange significance when the men who summon the world's cameras are members of a feared insurgent group that banned television when they ruled Afghanistan and sheltered al-Qaida.
  • (12) Training grounds during a World Cup turn out to be a strange little bubble of a world.
  • (13) I was an immigrant, although a reluctant one, and I was living in a huge strange country that resembled the America I'd encountered in books and in films so much less than I had expected.
  • (14) When female voles were allowed contact with the stud male for only 1 h at the time of mating, 55% exhibited pregnancy failure when exposed to a strange male 48 h later.
  • (15) As Nelson Mandela lay in the open casket , his features both familiar and strange, a crisply suited Robert Mugabe gazed down at him through his dark glasses for a long, still, silent moment.
  • (16) When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white... Further - and this is a stroke of his sensitive, pawky genius - he contemplates his momentarily displaced furniture and the nuance of enchanting strangeness: It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy's pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories ...
  • (17) 12.24am BST The Labor leader has seen the decision by the Greens to back in Tony Abbott in reintroducing fuel tax indexation in this budget, but strangely he has not seen their decision to oppose the deficit tax, even though it was announced at the same time.
  • (18) Strange in that Chomsky's interview was given to the state-owned news agency at about the same time as another arm of the Russian state despatched two Tupolev Tu-95 strategic bombers for a cheeky incursion into the Nato-protected zone off Scotland's north coast .
  • (19) To explain these contentions, the history, strengths, and limits of reductionist thinking are discussed, and aspects of chaos science, such as the butterfly effect and strange attractors, are described.
  • (20) Strangely enough, we continue to endure retrograde policy approaches that are more likely to further entrench a sense of disempowerment among Aboriginal people, rather than acknowledge and enable individual empowerment.