What's the difference between stolid and sullen?

Stolid


Definition:

  • (a.) Hopelessly insensible or stupid; not easily aroused or excited; dull; impassive; foolish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The rhythm section is strong: occasionally stolid, always solid and sometimes – in particular on their career highpoint, the extraordinary "damn you, England" rant called "The Queen is Dead" – totally inspired.
  • (2) The menu is stolidly British – tea and biscuits, fish and chips and club sandwiches are favourites.
  • (3) As the Ohio State University climatologist Lonnie G Thompson, a world-renowned specialist on glacier melt, explained in 2010 , “Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group.
  • (4) He saw the new forces of educational selection in postwar Britain as yielding a new "restless elite", a creative minority rising above "the stolid majority".
  • (5) He arrived in office with the image of a stolid traditionalist, suffered some early wounding setbacks but emerged at the end of it as a pioneering campaigner in partnership with one of the most glamorous film stars on the planet.
  • (6) Ray (2004) The late Ray Charles is conjured up in all his playful, lustful, anguished glory in this otherwise stolid, respectful biopic of the legendary musician.
  • (7) To our left sat a stolid middle-aged black couple in the Mad Hatter attire that has become part of the South African football fan's kit.
  • (8) While Lessing's brother, Harry settled into a life of stolid conformity, she rebelled, graduating from a junior school run by nuns who had been out in the sun too long, to a high school which she left when she was 14.
  • (9) 58 min: Holland are looking stolid and unimaginative.
  • (10) 3.36am GMT 56 mins The lack of the overlapping full backs (Scott is no Yedlin) is beginning to make Seattle look a little stolid trying to play through this narrow Portland midfield.
  • (11) One by one, our equivocal hero seeks out the runaways: worldly-wise Zhora (Joanna Cassidy); stolid Leon (Brion James); the “pleasure-model” Pris ( Daryl Hannah ); and the group’s apparent leader, the ultimate Nietzschean blond beast, Roy Batty (the wonderful Rutger Hauer).
  • (12) The Guardian Review book club boasts a distinguished history of literary guests, but only Lessing achieved the distinction of a spontaneous standing ovation upon entering the room, a tiny figure dressed entirely in black, stolid as a carved deity.
  • (13) But Rjukan itself, until then, was stolidly unimpressed.
  • (14) When he comes back from the effects of a heart attack in his garden, it is with inner sensation – "an audible pop in the ears" – and a kind of self-spectatorship: "a rich consciousness of solitude, and a feeling of love and admiration for this big stolid body I was in".
  • (15) Led by the passionate Charles Parnell , and then by the stolid John Redmond , the Irish Parliamentary party’s obstructionism and filibusters won many reforms for Ireland.
  • (16) One kind morning I got myself to a meeting with a marvellous occupational therapist, Nicky deCourcy, who stolidly laid out a few facts, among them the detail that I wouldn't be able to cope for a while with more than two extraneous interventions – quiet TV plus reading, say, or radio plus writing – and that sudden urgent sounds would send me, in the medical terminology, a bit wacko.
  • (17) Now, Germans practise the stolid virtues of thrift and moderation we once thought our own, while the British, who once abhorred debt, have become a nation of maniacal spendthrifts.
  • (18) Orwell never explains why the stolid old Anglo-Saxon should be any more "clear" than such newfangled horrors; as "predict" and "extraneous" demonstrate now, words minted from the classical will very rapidly seem entirely normal.
  • (19) I was convinced that, for all its Thatcherite ugliness and excess, there was something about the UK's gritty liveliness that would leave the stolid Germans behind.
  • (20) By allowing TV cameras to broadcast the coronation at Westminster Abbey live to millions of her citizens the Queen transformed a stolid state ceremony into a national celebration.

Sullen


Definition:

  • (a.) Lonely; solitary; desolate.
  • (a.) Gloomy; dismal; foreboding.
  • (a.) Mischievous; malignant; unpropitious.
  • (a.) Gloomily angry and silent; cross; sour; affected with ill humor; morose.
  • (a.) Obstinate; intractable.
  • (a.) Heavy; dull; sluggish.
  • (n.) One who is solitary, or lives alone; a hermit.
  • (n.) Sullen feelings or manners; sulks; moroseness; as, to have the sullens.
  • (v. t.) To make sullen or sluggish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Most defendants in multimillion-euro fraud cases turn up to court ashen-faced and sullen-looking.
  • (2) Broadly defined, this sort of behaviour involves procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, obstructionism, self-pity and a tendency to create chaotic situations.
  • (3) The result is a weird kind of dissonance: blogs and op-ed pieces written in London salivate over "the most important byelection in 30 years" and claim – with some justification – that its outcome will have profound consequences for the two coalition parties, while most locals view it all with a sullen detachment.
  • (4) They were instantly swamped by sunlight; more the sullen accused on trial than Her Majesty's front bench.
  • (5) "Even a total stranger could experience the chilling effect of seeing sullen pairs of the Guardia Civil walking the street."
  • (6) In his memoir , Brown’s former aide Damian McBride candidly describes the thrill of having the ear of one of the most powerful men in the land – though he confesses the prime minister would “stare at [him] sullenly for a moment or two, then say: ‘Get me Ed Balls.’” I certainly met plenty of chiefs of staff and spin doctors who jealously guarded their privileged access to a particular politician and their status as that MP’s “vicar on Earth”.
  • (7) Against a backdrop described by the King's Fund thinktank as "deepening pessimism about the ability of the NHS to make ends meet, particularly in 2015-16", many on the health side are sullenly resentful of "their" money going into the BCF.
  • (8) Factor analysis of this brief inventory resulted in eight factors: disorientation, impaired concentration and thinking, paranoid-hallucinatory symptoms, anxiety, sullen inadequacy (restraint depression), hostility, loss of control, giving up.
  • (9) Through a double-glazed window in an adjacent room, a sullen security guard in khaki watches over all.
  • (10) Shortly after midnight Friday, partygoers belted Purple Rain together, a notably moving moment amid a sullen day.
  • (11) That sullen death-stare she perfected as April in Parks & Rec should come in handy somewhere on the dark side, perhaps as a female Sith Lord – a Sith Lady, if you will.
  • (12) If you’re sensing that the Mill is bored, or better yet, indifferent, or better yet, showing all the sullen ardour of a husband obliging himself to make love to his wife in the thick of a carnal indifference, then take your right hand, place it over your left shoulder and give yourself a big old pat on the back.
  • (13) I interviewed G-Unit once (minus the banged-up Tony Yayo) and they were the antithesis of the sullen, aggressive rapper stereotype (although they did turn their noses up at the very idea of letting any of the "British food" at their 5-star hotel pass their lips, and sent their manager out for a McDonalds instead).
  • (14) There are roadblocks manned by sullen-looking teenagers cradling AK-47s, but no meaningful law and order.
  • (15) Behind came a straggling caravan of mules and porters, including a couple of teenage boys who watched the college girls with sullen fascination.
  • (16) McFadden's penalty brought City a point, at which point William Gallas went all precious, attacking an advertising board and sitting sullenly on the pitch after the final whistle.
  • (17) A period as manager of Port Vale, after Stoke had rather sullenly parted company with him, reducing his wages and refusing him complimentary tickets, was ill-starred.
  • (18) It made him look sullen, grumpy and at worst disengaged from his challenger.
  • (19) Obscenity is lecherous and sullen in regard to women and virulent towards men: it may then be interpreted as a mean of struggle against the anxiety of death.
  • (20) Manchester United survived a couple of scares in 2008 at Wigan, but ultimately won 2-0 comfortably, while in 2010 Chelsea romped to an 8-0 victory over Wigan at Stamford Bridge as United sullenly and pointlessly beat Stoke City 4-0 at home.