What's the difference between reply and watchword?

Reply


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To make a return in words or writing; to respond; to answer.
  • (v. i.) To answer a defendant's plea.
  • (v. i.) Figuratively, to do something in return for something done; as, to reply to a signal; to reply to the fire of a battery.
  • (v. t.) To return for an answer.
  • (v. i.) That which is said, written, or done in answer to what is said, written, or done by another; an answer; a response.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I said: ‘Apologies for doing this publicly, but I did try to get a meeting with you, and I couldn’t even get a reply.’ And then I had a massive go at him – about everything really, from poverty to uni fees to NHS waiting times.” She giggles again.
  • (2) Responses to a monthly survey of 450-500 surveyors (usually 250-300 reply).
  • (3) When asked why the streets of London were not heaving with demonstrators protesting against Russia turning Aleppo into the Guernica of our times, Stop the War replied that it had no wish to add to the “jingoism” politicians were whipping up against plucky little Russia .
  • (4) Can somebody who is not a billionaire, who stands for working families, actually win an election into which billionaires are pouring millions of dollars?” Naming prominent and controversial rightwing donors, he said: “It is not just Hillary, it is the Koch brothers, it is Sheldon Adelson.” Stephanopoulos seized the moment, asking: “Are you lumping her in with them?” Choosing to refer to the 2010 supreme court decision that removed limits on corporate political donations, rather than address the question directly, Sanders replied: “What I am saying is that I get very frightened about the future of American democracy when this becomes a battle between billionaires.
  • (5) According to the report filed by the New York state department of financial services (NYSDFS), when warned by a US colleague about dealings with Iran, a Standard Chartered executive caustically replied: "You f---ing Americans.
  • (6) A survey sent randomly to 30 retail pharmacies got 24 replies.
  • (7) To which Salim replies: “But you do.” When such intimacy between two men can be broadcast to an audience of millions, we are shown that the ways of portraying gay sex can be reframed.
  • (8) Of 519 patients on the waiting list, replies were received from 471 (91%).
  • (9) Justice Hiley later suggested the conduct required by a doctor outside of his profession, as Chapman was describing it, was perhaps a “broad generality” and not specific enough “to create an ethical obligation.” “It’s no broader than the Hippocratic oath,” Chapman said in her reply.
  • (10) "Most technologies have their bright and dark side," he replies, buoyantly.
  • (11) Asked about white predominance in the sport, South African rugby journalist Paul Dobson replied: "If you suggest that again I'll get annoyed and put the phone down.
  • (12) #WhitePrideWorldWide.” Anonymous replied in true vigilante style on Sunday, by taking control of the KKK Twitter account and replacing the logo with its own.
  • (13) Asked what form the arrangements could take, the peer replied: "Wherever we think that there's something happening that is undesirable and we're looking very carefully at how to draw up those protections."
  • (14) Asked if he thought the committee had been misled, Whittingdale replied: "I'm not sure yet."
  • (15) "I can't decide by myself," Mourinho replied when asked how the injuries would influence his team selection at Anfield.
  • (16) Last year he was asked how it was mathematically possible for all schools to exceed the national average, and replied: " By getting better all the time. "
  • (17) I watched some boxing last night," he replies in his faint, lisping voice.
  • (18) The other example is of a woman who had a child who died at the age of 10 and expressed no regrets, but when questioned about whether she would have continued a pregnancy knowingly aware the baby would die in 10 years, the woman replied that she could not imagine how anyone could be so strong as to bear a child knowing the brevity of its life.
  • (19) Asked whether the US tax code was convoluted and difficult to understand partly because of lobbying by companies including Apple for exemptions, Cook replied: "No doubt."
  • (20) Rule one surely is to reply to customers' phone calls and letters.

Watchword


Definition:

  • (n.) A word given to sentinels, and to such as have occasion to visit the guards, used as a signal by which a friend is known from an enemy, or a person who has a right to pass the watch from one who has not; a countersign; a password.
  • (n.) A sentiment or motto; esp., one used as a rallying cry or a signal for action.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He poses a far greater risk to our security than any other Labour leader in my lifetime September 12, 2015 “Security” appears to be the new watchword of Cameron’s government – it was used six times by the prime minister in an article attacking Corbyn in the Times late last month, and eight times by the chancellor, George Osborne, in an article published in the Sun the following day.
  • (2) Individualism – the assertion of every person’s claim to maximised private freedom and the unrestrained liberty to express autonomous desires … became the leftwing watchword of the hour.” The result was an astonishing liberation: from millennia of social, gender and sexual control by powerful, mostly elderly men.
  • (3) That will be the watchword of David Cameron’s Tories next week.
  • (4) The mantra of "fewer, better" will become a watchword across the BBC's output – as will collaboration with other broadcasters: a reinvented Call The Midwife is relocated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
  • (5) Instead of being held captive to words such as "rational suicide" or "euthanasia", what is needed is an acceptance of more contemporary watchwords such as autonomy and self-determination.
  • (6) The watchwords are suitably commercial: “strategic commissioning”, “market-making”, and “brand protection”.
  • (7) In private, the watchword remains "Hamburger Hill", the brutal 80s Vietnam war film named because Vietnamese bullets turned human flesh into hamburger meat.
  • (8) Indeed, "choice and control" have been watchwords espoused by politicians of all hues since the mid-90s.
  • (9) It would seem unlikely that Germany would countenance any of these measures in any way, and for that reason caution remains the watchword.
  • (10) Count the number of times you hear the chancellor and prime minister say “security”, their watchword and their excuse for all they mean to do, from brutal spending cuts to purchasing an armoury of foreign military hardware.
  • (11) Shopping will change beyond recognition, with “ hyper showrooming ” the watchword – shops will become “emotional destinations”, products hidden away behind digital screens, and heavily tailored to individual taste, guided by algorithms and ultimately our own prior behaviour.
  • (12) Patience, not aggression, has been the watchword of law enforcement ever since.
  • (13) Ruthlessness has become the network owners' watchword now, because the mobile phone boom they have ridden for nearly 20 years is over.
  • (14) Caution was the watchword, and both coaches were unapologetic.
  • (15) Security” is Cameron’s current watchword – “for families, for the country” – but there is no security for families forever on short private leases.
  • (16) The traditional core service in most places is essential support with personal care for people with long-term health and care needs, where the watchword is continuity of relationships, reliability and dignity.
  • (17) "Reform" was their watchword and they had one new article of faith: that the best proof of any leader's bona fides was the habit of loudly defining themselves against their own side.
  • (18) Except for a few tweaks that generally resonate more at home than with Germany's European and international partners (such as requiring the government to be more transparent concerning arms exports to autocratic regimes), continuity and caution will remain the watchwords of German foreign and security policy.
  • (19) One understanding holds "Benghazi" as a watchword for government malfeasance.
  • (20) "[We] propose a 'new union for fairness' whose watchwords are power-sharing, diversity and constitutional partnership, replacing the old union of centralisation, uniformity and Westminster's undivided sovereignty."