What's the difference between sob and whimper?

Sob


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To soak.
  • (v. i.) To sigh with a sudden heaving of the breast, or with a kind of convulsive motion; to sigh with tears, and with a convulsive drawing in of the breath.
  • (n.) The act of sobbing; a convulsive sigh, or inspiration of the breath, as in sorrow.
  • (n.) Any sorrowful cry or sound.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "After I saw you there, I just went out and sobbed.
  • (2) The results suggest that (i) the SOS response of E. coli and the SOB response of B. subtilis are strikingly similar from both a phenotypic and a regulatory standpoint and that RecA and LexA protein analogs exist in B. subtilis, (ii) the Recbs protein is capable of regulating its own production, and (iii) SOS-inducing (RecA-activating) signals are generated in B. subtilis following either DNA damage or the development of physiological competence.
  • (3) Effects of amygdaloid lesions on the switch-off behavior (SOB) and behavioral changes induced by a delayed reinforcement (DR) for SOB were investigated in 12 cats.
  • (4) Acts of kindness move Langham to tears, and before long another memory has him sobbing.
  • (5) He went from minstrel show to blackface, from vaudeville to Broadway before he hit a fabulous prosperity as the most sentimental of all sentimental singers, a poor Russian cantor's son daubed with burnt cork and down on one knee sobbing for the "mammy" he had never known in a south that nobody ever knew.
  • (6) No one photographs the child with learning difficulty, sobbing as the teaching assistant they worked with for the past three years is booted out.
  • (7) He is very kind, honest, funny,” she said on Monday, sobbing as she remembered her only child, who had been flying home from Malaysia, where he was studying.
  • (8) In a televised meeting that has gone viral, the German chancellor rubs the shoulder of a sobbing teenager after telling her she was one of “thousands and thousands” of refugees that her country was unable to help.
  • (9) Since then, the cursing and sobbing have been plentiful.
  • (10) "This depressing morning has now got me questioning my pitiful existence," sobs James Dodge.
  • (11) She is generally a happy person, but in the last few weeks she has been showing signs of deep anxiety, phoning me sobbing with fear.
  • (12) The 56-year-old held a tissue to her face and sobbed during a five-minute hearing at City of Westminster magistrates court in central London.
  • (13) Liam Stacey , 21, of Pontypridd, south Wales, sobbed as he was taken away after the failed appeal hearing at Swansea crown court.
  • (14) The paper's "special investigation", headlined "No ID, no checks … and vouchers for sob stories: the truth behind those shock food bank claims", suggested that claims about the scale of Britain's welfare problems had been exaggerated.
  • (15) I sobbed for the last 30 pages but not, perhaps, for the reason you'd expect.
  • (16) Naturally I confronted them about it, halting their child's progress with a foot on the front bumper, loudly berating their crass behaviour while impressed pedestrians looked on, cheering and punching the air and chanting my name until Audi boy's parents fell to the ground, clutching pitifully at my trouser-legs and sobbing for forgiveness.
  • (17) 4.59pm BST "My fiancee have decided to get married in whichever country wins the World Cup so this game really has me torn," sobs Nate Philipps.
  • (18) She was followed by several women who must have been relatives or neighbours living nearby; the cries and sobs were so loud they could be heard clearly over the shooting and chanting from the street.
  • (19) "It's just so depressing this whole situation," sobs Angus Chisholm.
  • (20) One hand held the corner of the tomb and he sobbed uncontrollably into the other.

Whimper


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To cry with a low, whining, broken voice; to whine; to complain; as, a child whimpers.
  • (v. t.) To utter in alow, whining tone.
  • (n.) A low, whining, broken cry; a low, whining sound, expressive of complaint or grief.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He went with a bang not a whimper: two of his last contributions to the New Republic were a trenchant critique of the history of the six-day war by Michael Oren, now Israeli ambassador to Washington, and an evisceration of Koba the Dread, Martin Amis's purported book on Stalin.
  • (2) The snowman's quest is accompanied by a fey, irritating cover version of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love , in which Holly Johnson is replaced by a breathy chanteuse whimpering at the piano like a dog that needs taking for a walk.
  • (3) On day four you ask for the salad as a main and then, when they refuse, order the duck again with a whimper.
  • (4) If they had come out fighting, we could have fought back; coming out crawling, whimpering at their own inadequacy, all we can do is accept that they've done their best.
  • (5) The catch-22 in this ambition, however, was that nothing serious was likely to go wrong so long as wets such as Walker, James Prior, Francis Pym and Ian Gilmour confined their opposition to her "revolution" to an occasional whimper of dissent.
  • (6) The systematic hacking of social security from this country's most vulnerable has been done with barely a whimper of remorse from the most powerful.
  • (7) Elsewhere, the corpses are swapped for tragedy and the Muttley chuckles turn to whimpers.
  • (8) "Ah just want to sort out the funeral," she blubbed at the preternaturally patient Chesney, overbite quivering like a hovercraft as the prospect of another 15 years of storylines involving the widow whimpering in her HMP Plot Device netball bib lumbered horrifyingly into view.
  • (9) A young title called Bang, from the makers of Classic Rock, closed without a whimper.
  • (10) He was rarely seen on the touchline as Fulham slipped towards their inevitable conclusion with barely a whimper.
  • (11) Homeless and dying, she roams the neighbourhood, whimpering and laughing.
  • (12) She was later to tell police that it was a cold morning and the "abnormally thin" child was whimpering.
  • (13) You'll be too busy whimpering and chewing on your fist.
  • (14) This cycle is broken when a Looper called Joe (played by Brick star Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes face-to-face with a target who won't just kneel there, whimper and die – himself.
  • (15) Though this is not good news, the euro may then actually end: not with a bang, but a whimper.
  • (16) At half-time against Newcastle he implored the players not to end their outstanding season "with a whimper".
  • (17) All of this has been done without even a whimper from the Liberal Democrats, who have lost any remaining vestige of credibility on civil liberties.
  • (18) The annoying thing about political storms like this is that real people are affected, meaning that you can't have too much sport without pausing to remember the whimpering unfortunates who have been on hold to HMPO, assured sincerely and repeatedly of the importance of their call, since last Tuesday.
  • (19) Finally, horribly, whimperingly, his victim said: "I don't know."
  • (20) The results suggested that repetitive hand and finger movements, stereotypic manipulation of objects, and making a face(s) mainly occur within arousal situations whereas eye poking, whimpering, and sucking thumbs or fingers especially are linked to monotony.

Words possibly related to "sob"