What's the difference between sullen and unhappy?

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.

Unhappy


Definition:

  • (a.) Not happy or fortunate; unfortunate; unlucky; as, affairs have taken an unhappy turn.
  • (a.) In a degree miserable or wretched; not happy; sad; sorrowful; as, children render their parents unhappy by misconduct.
  • (a.) Marked by infelicity; evil; calamitous; as, an unhappy day.
  • (a.) Mischievous; wanton; wicked.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But what they take for a witticism might very well be true; most of Ellis's novels tell more or less the same story, about the same alienated ennui, and maybe they really are nothing more than the fictionalised diaries of an unremarkably unhappy man.
  • (2) Unless psychic rehabilitation is undertaken in tandem with physical rehabilitation, a spinal cord-injured patient is likely to become an unhappy social recluse or denizen of a chronic care facility, rather than an independent productive member of his community.
  • (3) Along the way, he fathered a child at 20 and immediately turned his back on her (they are now reunited), had a brief and unhappy marriage to the broadcaster Carol McGiffin and a series of frenetically unsatisfying relationships.
  • (4) I remind him that he had been unhappy with the penalty awarded to Barcelona in the Champions League game at Wembley last season, and he smiles.
  • (5) George Osborne may well end up in the unhappy position of trying to convince the public, in a haunting echo of the 2010 campaign, that he is still the man to bring the nation's finances back into balance by the end of the next parliament.
  • (6) Photograph: Rex If they are still unhappy they can go to the free Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), which resolves disputes between consumers and financial firms, although the PAC raised concerns about the service’s backlog of cases.
  • (7) Three months later the mothers appeared to be interacting normally with their infants, but they expressed feelings of unhappiness that persisted until the infants reached 9 months of age.
  • (8) So we're all very unhappy about it, but what can we do?
  • (9) The church excommunicated him in 1901, unhappy with his novel Resurrection and Tolstoy's espousal of Christian anarchist and pacifist views.
  • (10) He said Abbott was reflecting the “unhappiness we all have with what was a big error”.
  • (11) The distance to the original venue was around 50 miles and the manager, who was unhappy with the scale of travel on last summer’s US tour, vetoed having to make the round trip.
  • (12) I don't think she would have been unhappy for songs to be published."
  • (13) The academic, one of the country’s leading experts on the drug, is particularly unhappy with the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which has run well-publicised articles by two critics of statins that he argues are flawed and misleading.
  • (14) The house flourished but the marriage was bitterly unhappy and ended in divorce.
  • (15) "Unable to get petrol yesterday and missed a full day's work which will be unpaid, very unhappy," said one from Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire.
  • (16) Splenectomy could gave a role in producing these unhappy results.
  • (17) He is reported to have expressed ­unhappiness at his own pending deployment and of US troops being responsible for the killing of fellow Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  • (18) The results, broadcast by Seven News on Wednesday, showed voters were also deeply unhappy with the performance of the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, and indicated that Turnbull enjoyed a strong lead as preferred prime minister.
  • (19) He says he was unconfident and largely unhappy at school.
  • (20) But the role opened my eyes to certain aspects of online gaming, such as harassment, abuse, threats and even stalking, and in many ways, it is an unhappy experience that I wish I could undo.