What's the difference between righteous and sanctimonious?

Righteous


Definition:

  • (a.) Doing, or according with, that which is right; yielding to all their due; just; equitable; especially, free from wrong, guilt, or sin; holy; as, a righteous man or act; a righteous retribution.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This may go some way to explaining why, even as his approval ratings fall off a cliff and some call for his impeachment, he sees no reason to course-correct, as he and a noisy caucus around him seem to become ever more self-righteous.
  • (2) [When he comes to a gig] it’s like a mate at school turning up.” Watson’s record of campaigns against phone hacking and establishment child abuse have also won him cross-party admiration and a public profile as a righteous crusader.
  • (3) Grass's new collection of poetry, Eintagsfliegen , published in Germany last week, describes Vanunu as a "role model and hero of our time" who "hoped to serve his country by helping to bring the truth to light", and calls on Israelis to "recognise ... as righteous" the man "who remained loyal to his country all those years", according to German reports .
  • (4) They – we – had come by bus, plane, train, car and hitch-hiker's thumb to demonstrate to ourselves and a watching world that there was a better, more righteous America than the Birmingham of Bull Connor who had set the dogs and fire hoses on black children.
  • (5) The Tea Party represents a serious strand in American public life – old-world fundamentalist in its exclusivity, self-righteousness and religious zeal.
  • (6) They are so convinced of their righteousness they cannot admit their faults.
  • (7) Skylight gives voice to private enterprise’s self-righteous hostility towards those who work in the public services.
  • (8) The FBI are sceptical that Pyongyang was responsible, and the government there denies that it had any involvement, even if it describes the hack as “a righteous deed”.
  • (9) With it would come “the Mother of Planes, which would hover over space for up to a year and then swoop down to rescue righteous black Muslims from the great white wasteland”.
  • (10) They converted and started to insult us, saying we do not believe in the oneness of Allah because of our love for saints.” Every Pakistani knows these preaching, self-righteous conservatives ... but you never expect them to indulge in violence Nadeem Farooq Paracha Like so many others, the Malik family were helped along in their religious journey by the experience of living as guest workers in the oil-rich Arab world.
  • (11) For many, fantasy is typified by The Lord of the Rings ; Miéville worked up a righteous fury against Tolkien's "cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos", calling him "the wen on the arse of fantasy literature" and setting out to "lance the boil".
  • (12) Righteous indignation was tweeted and retweeted, celebrities piled on the pressure, pundits sharpened their quills.
  • (13) Increasingly, the paranoid defensiveness of the zealots cannot be reconciled with the righteous anger of those who believe every superlative performance must be suspect.
  • (14) True, as we were reminded last week, members of the EDL have miraculously survived all such conditioning; equally, these extremists now risk being righteously snubbed in Mens' Socks.
  • (15) It is, I imagine, the same sentiment a potential jihadist feels when he or she foolishly believes that they’re being righteously called upon to fight for the creation of an Islamic state, as if that might fix what are largely personal troubles.
  • (16) A muted reaction works better than the self-righteous explosion they are sometimes hankering after.
  • (17) Typical of the PC brigade - one Iraqi man gets beaten to death and they are down on you like a ton of righteous liberal bricks!
  • (18) In its proper context – of a US puffed up with righteousness and seized by Islamophobia – I think Homeland is a revolutionary piece of work, merely by having the courage to tell a story from the perspective of two characters who are questioning whether US policy in the Middle East is right.
  • (19) Thanks to recent appearances on Question Time and Newsnight , it is popular – righteous, even – to loathe David Starkey.
  • (20) It was a bad business but not as bad as the self-righteous Carswell or the tax-shy Tory press made it sound at the time.

Sanctimonious


Definition:

  • (a.) Possessing sanctimony; holy; sacred; saintly.
  • (a.) Making a show of sanctity; affecting saintliness; hypocritically devout or pious.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) She provides a strong contrast to her sanctimonious, humourless sister Mary, who spouts empty platitudes about acceptable female conduct.
  • (2) It's not just on Fox News, but now also on MSNBC, where speaking critically of a military official, even in the mildest of tones, is treated like it's some sort of grave crime against the state: one that results in sanctimonious outbursts, manipulative appeals to patriotism, and the casting of the offender out of decent company.
  • (3) But Cruz’s aura of smug sanctimony, like his lack of humility, is striking even in an age of Trumpery.
  • (4) Here's a chocolate tart to really enjoy – not sanctimoniously dark or unpalatably bitter – just smooth, malty and rich.
  • (5) Suzuki admitted to journalists he called Trudeau a twerp, and the Liberal leader dismissed his critique of the party’s climate policy as “sanctimonious crap”.
  • (6) However, he also said it was important “not to feel too sanctimonious”, adding that he believed intelligence officials responsible for torturing detainees were working during a period of extraordinary stress and fear.
  • (7) My sanctimonious two cents: We all do stupid things and saying sorry when you’re in the wrong is always a good thing, but the monotonous regularity with which Pardew gets himself in scrapes with rival managers, officials and - now - opposition players tends to render his post match apologies rather hollow.
  • (8) Hockey said he wasn't interested in "sanctimonious lectures" from a prime minister who had "called me a fat man in parliament" and who had on Tuesday branded him and his colleagues "effectively, misogynist pigs".
  • (9) As this report is a sanctimony-free zone, we'll not be going into the rights and wrongs of last night's game here, but whichever side of the argument you stand, you have got to admit: that is one hell of a quote .
  • (10) Certainly, there are those of us who have begun to regard Tumour Neck Man as an old friend, a fellow sinner in a world full of sanctimonious bores.
  • (11) I had no responsibility for, or interest in, the sanctimony of other news organisations.
  • (12) Despite the government's sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended.
  • (13) One says that this is a mere smokescreen of sanctimony meant to hide a retreat from a market Google was unable to conquer for business reasons … The other is that this is a true act of moral bravery," said Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based expert on the internet.
  • (14) It will be the British at their worst: sanctimonious, self-congratulatory, worshipping at the tomb of the unknown, awful German.
  • (15) For those who believe the Liberal Democrats can sometimes veer between the sanctimonious and the eccentric, all this will seem further confirmation of the party's fundamental unfitness to govern.
  • (16) It will just turn you in to a self-deluding, sanctimonious bore.
  • (17) There are reasons for not clambering on to the soap boxes of sanctimony too swiftly.
  • (18) Look, at the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I think the BBC is there to do good.
  • (19) I could be a critical friend of the coalition.” While his party was in government, Farron voted against the tuition fee rise and the bedroom tax, provoking a senior party member to confide to a reporter, “Which bit of the sanctimonious, God-bothering, treacherous little shit is there not to like?” Just weeks before this year’s election, he scandalised colleagues by scoring his party’s handling of coalition politics a headline-catching two out of 10.
  • (20) Johnson said the BBC’s more niche public service programmes “go on to BBC4 where quite often you can’t measure the audience but they fulfil their remit and they can argue when they go on their sanctimonious missions about justifying £4bn [in licence fee income], ‘Well of course, we do all these obscure programmes that no one watched.’ “They put them on a slot where no one was ever going to watch them.” On the licence fee, Johnson told the committee: “I challenge you to find a more regressive system in terms of who gets the best value from it.