What's the difference between scoff and smirk?

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.

Smirk


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To smile in an affected or conceited manner; to smile with affected complaisance; to simper.
  • (n.) A forced or affected smile; a simper.
  • (a.) Nice,; smart; spruce; affected; simpering.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) 5.14pm GMT Alan Pardew speaks ... With a smirk playing around his chops in a charm offensive on Sky Sports, he says he ‘massively regrets” sticking the hid on Hull City midfielder David Meyler and says he’ll be sitting down for matches in the future.
  • (2) If Kyrgios cares about his career – and sometimes he is so blase about his success, wealth and celebrity he professes to hate tennis – the hip young dude from Canberra who smirks when he should be smiling, who plainly is struggling with fame, needs to understand he is not the only clown in town.
  • (3) He often seems mysteriously amused, cocking an eyebrow and pulling a coy, wouldn’t-you-like-to-know smirk, but he likes to laugh out loud, too.
  • (4) Asked about his repeated gestures, grins and smirks towards the victims, she said it brought back memories of seeing him at Srebrenica.
  • (5) "Now we know our fortresses are secure," says their president, Tim Farron, a smirk of triumph in his voice, "we can collect 25 or 30 more Tory seats."
  • (6) They get angry at the justice minister’s smirk as he refutes “any security gap” when in fact the bombs exploded close to an interior ministry building and the headquarters of the Turkish national intelligence organisations.
  • (7) He has a way of holding a half-smile on his face while listening to his opponent that appears perilously close to a smirk.
  • (8) It can take all of a parent's ingenuity to get though a shopping trip without unwillingly picking up a tin of Barbie spaghetti shapes, a box of cereal with Lightning McQueen smirking from the front, or a bag of fruit chews with a catchy jingle.
  • (9) His bastard Ramsay has shown his colors (whatever color is for sadism), but Roose – who abstains from alcohol and only offers a smirk at Lady Stark here, a frown with Jaime Lannister there – is still a cypher.
  • (10) Bidisha : Two sexist remarks and one misogynist one At a major literary festival, before an event about military fiction, a posh famous English author smirked to me, "What's the difference between a woman and a piece of toast?
  • (11) I saw the smirk, too, when I went on the road with Prince and the Revolution two years later, accompanying the 1999 tour on several dates through the Midwest.
  • (12) They might have been even more shaken had they known that the men in casual clothes handing them these strange, badly set little pamphlets – with their funereal black borders and another death’s head leering at them inside next to the smirking wish “Good luck” – were members of New York’s police forces.
  • (13) With such knowledge comes a predictable illusion of power, though this is all too regularly punctured by the indignity of being kicked out of shiny receptions and told to use an entrance more befitting of our lowly status – or of having my pronunciation of “Southwark Street” incorrectly corrected by a receptionist, who gives her colleague a sidelong smirk, commiserating over my supposed ignorance.
  • (14) When I look at their faces, I see nothing but bravado, whether it’s Beyoncé’s stoicism, Kerry Washington’s smirk or Serena’s confidence.
  • (15) The camera cuts to Groves in the audience, who is smirking at Froch's words.
  • (16) Leonardo DiCaprio plays Calvin Candie, the sadistic plantation owner, smirking into the zoom lens.
  • (17) A political debate that revolves around sniggering at women’s body parts and smirks about gay hairdressers?
  • (18) On another occasion, as the judge addressed Mladic about the procedure, the defendant appeared to switch off and turned to the victims again, smirking and nodding at them.
  • (19) On Thursday, she was pictured semi-naked on the cover of the Daily Star, a cut out of the heads of presenters Ant and Dec over each of her breasts, above a smirking caption claiming that "Naughty Nadine Dorries has boobed again!"
  • (20) The Catholic father in Ken Loach's Jimmy's Hall is just the most implacable enemy of nice-as-pie communists showing everyone a good time; the village imam in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Winter Sleep is an ingratiating, smirking creep; and the local rev in The Homesman (as played by John Lithgow) is definitely a weasel, rather too obviously grateful not to have to transport three traumatised frontierwomen back east.