What's the difference between sabotage and undermine?

Sabotage


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When allegations of systemic doping and cover-ups first emerged in the runup to the 2013 Russian world athletics championships, an IOC spokesman insisted: “Anti-doping measures in Russia have improved significantly over the last five years with an effective, efficient and new laboratory and equipment in Moscow.” London Olympics were sabotaged by Russia’s doping, report says Read more We now know that the head of that lauded Moscow lab, Grigory Rodchenko, admitted to intentionally destroying 1,417 samples in December last year shortly before Wada officials visited.
  • (2) When the two sides met last season it finished 6-0 to Chelsea to sabotage Wenger’s 1,000th match as Arsenal’s manager and left him so distressed that, for the first time ever, he refused to do his press conference.
  • (3) One would assume that green groups would want to make absolutely sure that the money they have raised in the name of saving the planet is not being invested in the companies whose business model requires cooking said planet, and which have been sabotaging all attempts at serious climate action for more than two decades.
  • (4) But while she unquestionably adds colour to Westminster, the outspoken MP has also shown a repeated facility for self-sabotage.
  • (5) If the rumours of Isis’s sabotage become reality, the consequence would be huge.
  • (6) In announcing this sabotage, ministers make a mockery of their own supposed core objectives: local empowerment within a "big society"; massive job creation – via a green industrial revolution – to counter austerity-related job losses; desire to be the greenest government ever ; tackling global warming, and so on.
  • (7) In both cases, her coaching seems to have paid off, at least for a time: those GOP lawmakers walked into decidedly fewer self-sabotaging boobytraps in the election cycle following the 2013 retreat at which she spoke, and Pence’s strong performance at the RNC last month was a bright spot in an otherwise blighted convention.
  • (8) "These acts of sabotage that threaten our country's whaling ships and crew were extremely dangerous," the agency said in a statement.
  • (9) Just over a third said they were persecuted through fear or threats, saying their career was deliberately sabotaged.
  • (10) Also in August, terrorist attacks were intensified, including speedboat strafing attacks on a Cuban seaside hotel "where Soviet military technicians were known to congregate, killing a score of Russians and Cubans"; attacks on British and Cuban cargo ships; contaminating sugar shipments; and other atrocities and sabotage, mostly carried out by Cuban exile organizations permitted to operate freely in Florida.
  • (11) Echoing Sisi, Fawzy speculated that whoever killed Regeni was trying to sabotage commercial relations between Egypt and Italy.
  • (12) There was a great hue and cry and everyone came out – but pretty soon the mullahs sabotaged the consensus and it all went quiet again.
  • (13) Attacks on the economic life-lines of the country were to be linked with sabotage on government buildings and other symbols of apartheid.
  • (14) The Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude , said: "Allegations about trade union industrial intimidation tactics, including attempts to sabotage businesses supply chains and harass employers' families are deeply concerning.
  • (15) Russian authorities should ensure a thorough and effective investigation, including making it clear to officials in Chechnya that sabotaging the process is not an option,” said Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch .
  • (16) It’s a form of, I think incredibly dangerous and vindictive industrial sabotage.
  • (17) On my return I found that there had been little alteration in the political scene save that the threat of a death penalty for sabotage had now become a fact.
  • (18) Microorganisms implement their strategy of persistence by two principal tactics: (1) sabotage of the host's bronchial defenses (ie, direct microbe-mediated damage to the host), and (2) subversion of the host's normally protective defenses into damaging host tissue itself (ie, indirect host-mediated damage provoked by the microbe).
  • (19) For fiction – our mirror to the world, our way of understanding it – to allow itself to become that battleground is insane, and self-sabotaging.
  • (20) Israel , which has an undeclared nuclear arsenal, has warned that it will not accept a nuclear-armed Iran and is suspected of running covert operations, with western countries, to sabotage Iran's programme.

Undermine


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To excavate the earth beneath, or the part of, especially for the purpose of causing to fall or be overthrown; to form a mine under; to sap; as, to undermine a wall.
  • (v. t.) Fig.: To remove the foundation or support of by clandestine means; to ruin in an underhand way; as, to undermine reputation; to undermine the constitution of the state.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Their efforts will include blocking the NSA from undermining encryption and barring other law enforcement agencies from collecting US data in bulk.
  • (2) And any Labour commitment on spending is fatally undermined by their deficit amnesia.” Davey widened the attack on the Tories, following a public row this week between Clegg and Theresa May over the “snooper’s charter”, by accusing his cabinet colleague Eric Pickles of coming close to abusing his powers by blocking new onshore developments against the wishes of some local councils.
  • (3) Chadwick felt that Customs and Trading Standards needed to continue their war on illegal tobacco – if not, efforts to tackle smoking could be undermined.
  • (4) But for decades now there has been a systematic undermining of it [the NHS’s] core values.
  • (5) The government also faced considerable international political pressure, with the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, calling publicly on the government to "provide full redress to the victims, including fair and adequate compensation", and writing privately to David Cameron, along with two former special rapporteurs, to warn that the government's position was undermining its moral authority across the world.
  • (6) Like the doctor who makes a decision to operate without consulting the patient, I’m diminishing your autonomy by undermining it.
  • (7) There, the US Joint Commission, an independent, non-profit organisation that accredits healthcare organisations and programmes has issued a standard on “behaviours that undermine a culture of safety” to tackle “intimidating and disruptive behaviour at work”.
  • (8) Group B meningococcal vaccine consisting of the natural complex of specific polysaccharide and outer membrane protein (OMP) has been shown to be moderately reactogenic, safe with respect to the effect of undermining tolerance to human brain tissue antigens and to produce no allergization of humans.
  • (9) The end of the cold war and a reshaping of the threats faced by the UK had undermined the logic of nuclear deterrence strategy, he said.
  • (10) Then Greece has another chance.” But the intervention by the IMF will undermine EU leaders who argue Greece must submit to a fresh round of austerity measures to release funds for debt repayments.
  • (11) Entitled Jobs, Justice and Equity, the report warned that growing inequality, marginalisation and disenfranchisement are threatening Africa's prospects and undermining the foundations of its recent success.
  • (12) Umunna said: "Where you have pay awards that bear no relation to performance, but also can be beyond what a company can sustain, it really undermines trust in the whole system.
  • (13) The home team's defence had been undermined by naivety and it was in evidence when Stepanov, already on a yellow card for a foul on McGeady and having been played into trouble, lunged for the ball only to be beaten to it by Keane.
  • (14) The home secretary has been concerned that British involvement in the UN refugee programme would become an open-ended commitment that risked undermining the Tories' commitment to reduce net migration to the UK to tens of thousands by 2015.
  • (15) The Public Accounts committee (PAC) said on Thursday that the "chaos" surrounding the failure of G4S to provide enough staff for the Olympics had undermined confidence in Games organisers.
  • (16) Moreover, uncertainty about the resolution of these fiscal issues could itself undermine business and household confidence," said Bernanke.
  • (17) The clashes between the moralistic Levin and his friend Oblonsky, sometimes affectionate, sometimes angry, and Levin's linkage of modernity to Oblonsky's attitudes – that social mores are to be worked around and subordinated to pleasure, that families are base camps for off-base nooky – undermine one possible reading of Anna Karenina , in which Anna is a martyr in the struggle for the modern sexual freedoms that we take for granted, taken down by the hypocritical conservative elite to which she, her lover and her husband belong.
  • (18) James Cleverly, MP for Braintree, who supported Johnson’s aborted leadership bid before backing May, said joking about him risked undermining the foreign secretary.
  • (19) These effects of governmental restrictions on abortion do indeed interfere with the obstetrician's basic goal of providing optimal care for the patient and undermine their efforts to improve maternal and infant health.
  • (20) Poor crossing undermined Liverpool in the first leg, Klopp had claimed, but the flaw was remedied quickly in the return.