What's the difference between quip and scoff?

Quip


Definition:

  • (n.) A smart, sarcastic turn or jest; a taunt; a severe retort; a gibe.
  • (v. t.) To taunt; to treat with quips.
  • (v. i.) To scoff; to use taunts.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It would not be so much "house arrest as manor arrest", he quipped.
  • (2) Richards was a feminist who, rather than scaring men, stung them with her wit, a technique she famously applied to President George Bush senior in what became a legendary quip in American politics.
  • (3) More than anything, I started to feel that I was calling my friends less, seeing my friends less and that our friendships were being reduced to a trickle of pictures, comments and quips.
  • (4) Keates quipped that the only positive thing she could think to say about the education secretary was that he was the union's "new poster boy", citing the surge in recruitment since he took over the department.
  • (5) "Greeks need to unburden their fears," says the comic, the scent of cologne permeating his dressing room after he has danced, sung and quipped his way through another rendition of "Sorry … I'm Greek".
  • (6) How to stop Donald Trump: women may hold the solution Read more If she believes that Trump’s criticism of women is not “gender-specific”, as she said in a CNN interview , can she tell us whether her father would ever quip that a male doctor graduated from “Baywatch Medical School ”?
  • (7) We have a few quotations from a compendium of jokes of the first emperor Augustus (not all brilliant: "When a man was nervously giving him a petition and kept putting his hand out, then drawing it back, the emperor quipped, 'Hey, do you think you're giving a penny to an elephant?'").
  • (8) That prompted a drummer in his studio band to storm off the stage in mock outrage while bandleader Kevin Eubanks quipped: "Jay, you're messing around on me?"
  • (9) 'A modern revolutionary group headed for the television, not for the factory,' quipped the late Abbie Hoffman, one of the great political pranksters of 1968who helped provoke a bloody battle between anti-war protesters and the Chicago police force at the Chicago Democratic convention.
  • (10) "That's Putin for you – just divorced and already looking for new adventures," one Israeli diplomat quipped.
  • (11) There are two things you need to know about David Nicholson, runs the health service quip about the NHS chief executive.
  • (12) We still want your money.” 'The question was stupid': Hungarians on the refugee referendum Read more The quip is a reminder that while this weekend’s referendum in Hungary was born from similar frustrations to the Brexit vote in June, the Hungarian right does not want to leave the EU.
  • (13) The two men, from different political camps, have a polite relationship that has sometimes been barbed and punctuated by stinging Conservative quips about French leftwing tax-and-spend policies .
  • (14) Bill Shorten quip on lettuce leaves the vegetable starring in national debate Read more State government support would be needed to implement that package, but some have already ruled out supporting an increase.
  • (15) quips Andy Daly, a statement that needs no punchline, but he delivers one anyway.
  • (16) Just from looking at Boris Johnson you can tell that British hairdressing is not doing so well,” quipped one.
  • (17) "Young people were born free; soon they may be everywhere in chains," Hands quipped in an oblique reference to academy chains.
  • (18) Pressed on the issue at prime minister's questions, Cameron quipped that Labour had promised to fund the allowance "from savings we've made from our success in reducing debt".
  • (19) He also quipped that one of his female MPs had "sex appeal" and wasn't "just a pretty face".
  • (20) But the validity of the individual measures and the relationship between achievement of QUIP standards and resident quality was not firmly established.

Scoff


Definition:

  • (n.) Derision; ridicule; mockery; derisive or mocking expression of scorn, contempt, or reproach.
  • (n.) An object of scorn, mockery, or derision.
  • (n.) To show insolent ridicule or mockery; to manifest contempt by derisive acts or language; -- often with at.
  • (v. t.) To treat or address with derision; to assail scornfully; to mock at.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Lunchtime read: How banter conquered Britain Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Guardian Design Team There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, you can eat at restaurants called Scoff & Banter or buy an “Archbishop of Banterbury” T-shirt for £9.99.
  • (2) Mere hypothecation, scoff politicians, rejecting the idea again in parliament yesterday.
  • (3) And does Ofsted really expect to get away with using the “kids today!” scoff as an actual, presentable-to-parliament reason for these embarrassingly high youth unemployment rates?
  • (4) Russia continues to scoff at evidence that Syrian government forces carried out the chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhun earlier this week.
  • (5) Brooks worries that part of the problem with society is that we have become conditioned to scoff the marshmallow.
  • (6) Penny Wong scoffs at 'entertaining but erratic' Barnaby Joyce leading National party Read more The governor of the Reserve Bank Glenn Stevens said at the time there were “few things less likely than Australia defaulting on its sovereign debt”.
  • (7) Rolf scoffs at those who say the Fight for 15, which the SEIU has underwritten, has failed at its goals of unionizing McDonald’s and getting it to adopt a $15 minimum.
  • (8) Clegg will insist that the Lib Dems have already replaced Labour as the country's leading "progressive" party and scoff at Tory pretensions to the same label.
  • (9) Heavily bandaged and unable to walk, she scoffs at the US ambassador's talk of a thorough investigation of the Ahuas raid.
  • (10) Rodgers scoffs at papers from US military colleges branding them a strategic threat and a Honduran government claim linking maras to al-Qaida.
  • (11) Although, of course, the easiest thing would simply to be British about all this and scoff.
  • (12) The Castrol Index, for the mercifully uninitiated, is of course the nonsense ranking scheme cooked up by some bods at Fifa's Castle Greyskull to give people even more of a reason to scoff at them, which is always grand.
  • (13) "You can't scoff at sewing and it's practicality," asserts Dave Montez.
  • (14) Sceptics may scoff, and results of an attempt to extract DNA and match it to descendants are not due until Christmas, but Thompson is adamant that the bones now resting in a safe in the archaeology and ancient history department of Leicester University are those of the last Plantagenet, Richard III , who rode out of Leicester on the morning of 22 August 1485 a king, and came back a naked corpse slung over the pommel of a horse.
  • (15) Presented with official estimates of how many immigrants are in the country illegally, a common response is to scoff.
  • (16) Morrissey scoffs at Vanessa Redgrave's celebrity humanitarianism in his autobiography.
  • (17) I used to scoff at the simplicity of equating onscreen violence with its real-world equivalent.
  • (18) Liberals may scoff, pundits may shake their heads, but Palin herself clearly still wants some form of political life.
  • (19) His opposite number scoffs at the forecasts and promises his tweaks would be far superior.
  • (20) Some might call such a day 'The Millennium', but America shies away from the socialist solution, while the rest of the world scoffs but votes with its wallets to adopt our culture.