What's the difference between venal and venial?

Venal


Definition:

  • (a.) Of or pertaining to veins; venous; as, venal blood.
  • (a.) Capable of being bought or obtained for money or other valuable consideration; made matter of trade or barter; held for sale; salable; mercenary; purchasable; hireling; as, venal services.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is not about who is tied to the most money – "there are so many people you could think should be taken" – but about who is judged to be too busy establishing their own kingdoms and using the party's authority purely for their own venal ends.
  • (2) The political charge sheet is long: incompetence, weakness, venality.
  • (3) All the while, a long list of corrupt and venal despots turned their rule into virtual kleptocracies and stole their children's futures.
  • (4) Given the venality of the system, Putin even said he could empathise with the protesters in Maidan square .
  • (5) That “trollumnist” Mark Latham, that “misogynist”, “venal”, “crazy-eyed moron” whose views should be “rejected and dismantled and kicked into the gutter where they belong” has resigned from the Australian Financial Review.
  • (6) Moral leader The Daily Mail on the FA's refusal to comment on JT: "Even in the sleazy, venal world of football, Terry's record was unforgivable.
  • (7) Plasma cadmium and zinc were determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry in inferior venal caval or peripheral venous blood in thrity hypertensive patients and fifteen normal subjects.
  • (8) The difference between the "rotten apple" (venal or incompetent physician) and the "bad apple" (careless or aggressive physician) is cited.
  • (9) Pigs to peerages: Lord Ashcroft’s act of revenge shows British politics at its venal worst | Simon Jenkins Read more Working for Gordon Brown , a man of Victorian sensibilities and a volatile temper, the second call was invariably greeted with the single word “What?
  • (10) Changes in the choroidal vasculature include: Venal focal dilations and narrowings, increased tortuosity, hypercellularity, increased formation of vascular loops and microaneurysms in choriocapillaries and formation of sinus-like structures between choroidal lobules.
  • (11) The restoration of integrity in banking will not happen without changes in the law to introduce serious criminal sanctions against venal traders and grossly negligent bosses.
  • (12) Thus the therapeutic usefulness for the treatment of chronic venal insufficiency is proven.
  • (13) Nice for those in the art world who view this approach as testimony to my venality, shallowness, malevolence.
  • (14) Did the Kelly affair crystallise everything that was wrong and venal about the whole Iraq adventure for Yorke?
  • (15) Corporations-are-people got the righteous ink, but the venal sin at the heart of Citizens United lies in the appalling equivocation that declares money to be speech.
  • (16) Yet some analysts say that the drive has simply pushed lavish official banquets and venal gift-giving underground .
  • (17) Dan Snyder’s former general manager, Vinny Cerrato, seems to suspect as much , and every crass venal thing everyone knows about Dan Snyder suggests Cerrato isn’t wrong.
  • (18) The authors, American researchers attached to special forces, conclude that the weakness and venality of the government in Kabul is an increasing source of strength for the insurgents.
  • (19) The country is virtually bankrupt ; Yanukovych stole billions from his own treasury, merely the latest in a long line of venal Ukrainian politicians who have looted the state.
  • (20) For local leaders, blaming al-Qaida both deflects blame from their own inefficiency and venality as well as potentially unlocking considerable financial, diplomatic and security assistance from the west.

Venial


Definition:

  • (a.) Capable of being forgiven; not heinous; excusable; pardonable; as, a venial fault or transgression.
  • (a.) Allowed; permitted.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Based upon our previous experience on the treatment of meningococcal infections with satisfactory evolution when the fourth day of therapy was finalized and taking into account published experiences with four or less days of therapy, we realized a study on the efficacy of a four days therapy when venial meningococcal infections but of seven days when the serious ones.
  • (2) It is argued that obvious statistical blunders (mortal sins) have not disappeared entirely from the aging literature, but that the most frequent error now is that of choosing a less powerful analytic solution when a more powerful (and equally applicable) one is at hand (a venial sin).