What's the difference between sullen and wistful?

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.

Wistful


Definition:

  • (a.) Longing; wishful; desirous.
  • (a.) Full of thought; eagerly attentive; meditative; musing; pensive; contemplative.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) One radio critic described Jacobs' late night Sunday show as a "tidying-up time, a time for wistfulness, melancholy, a recognition that there were once great things and great feelings in this world.
  • (2) I can't pull an invisibility cloak over my house – nor would I wish to," she said, a little wistfully, as if she really wished she had Harry Potter's magic powers.
  • (3) The age-courses of concentrations of reduced (GSH) and oxidized (GSSG) glutathione, of GSH synthesizing enzyme activities, of glutathione S-transferase (GST), of GSSG-reductase (GR) and of biliary GSH and GSSG export were measured in livers from male Uje:WIST rats.
  • (4) – but Russell happily slips in and out of voices and lines from the movie, his recollections punctuated by wistful sighs.
  • (5) The former Internazionale owner Massimo Moratti has been staring wistfully into the distance and wonder what might have been if he had not dished his dosh on the Special One rather than mere players.
  • (6) Shareholders may be forgiven for thinking wistfully of the £55 which Pfizer offered to pay for each of their shiny shares.
  • (7) Jeremy Corbyn still speaks about it wistfully – a rally in Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket that turned into one of the most emotional moments of his leadership campaign.
  • (8) Softness and tenderness, wistful ironies” he conceded as blindspots, describing Motown as mere “foot fodder” but having a lot of time for relatively minor practitioners such as Joe Tex , who he saw as “hugely smug” but with “great charm and inventiveness”.
  • (9) Every now and then I get wistful for when I was just a consumer of games because I can never have that back, but fortunately the love of the work is strong enough that I’m okay with that, and I’ve played so many life-changing games because I’m seeking them through the lens of a developer.
  • (10) The antiarrhythmic effects and pharmacodynamics of tobanum were evaluated in 28 patients wist paroxysms of reciprocal atrioventricular tachycardia, by using transesophageal cardiac pacing.
  • (11) After the jet-black high school satire Heathers pulled the rug out from under John Hughes and his oversharing Brat Pack, in 1989, American adolescents were left with few offerings, most of them wistful odes to another age – either stylistically, as with the overblown, pirate-radio-themed Christian Slater vehicle Pump Up the Volume; or quite literally, in the case of Richard Linklater’s nostalgia-fuelled 70s pastiche, Dazed and Confused.
  • (12) We are sitting in a boardroom on the seventh floor of the new Birmingham library , the glass walls allowing us a view of a city draped in mist, a sharp contrast to the "paradise" of Swat, with its tall mountains and clear rivers which Malala recalls wistfully.
  • (13) "Oh, it was lovely," said the retired factory worker, 61, as he smiled wistfully in the bright sunshine.
  • (14) The subjects (N = 30) were grouped into high and low levels of thought dysfunction, as measured by the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST).
  • (15) Recently an individually administered instrument (WIST) was introduced as a brief, objective, and quantitative measure of schizophrenic thought processes.
  • (16) There's one aspect of his former life he misses: "The sweat," he sighs wistfully.
  • (17) [Small Talk thinks back wistfully to a time when ice creams were bigger, Liverpool were challenging for the league, Glenn Medeiros was top of the charts…] So you caught the cycling bug?
  • (18) Ss were administered a conjunctive, disjunctive, conditional or biconditional rule learning task, WIST, and Shipley-Hartford Memory Scale.
  • (19) It is now possible to separate wistful thinking from reality.
  • (20) It was with a mixture of wistfulness and his usual forthright bullishness that Sam Allardyce, briefly moving his attention away from the 21st-century football that West Ham United intend to confront Chelsea with on Friday afternoon, looked back eight years and contemplated what he might have achieved in his final season at Bolton Wanderers if he had received greater financial backing – or, to be precise, any financial backing – when his team were hovering around the Champions League places at Christmas.