What's the difference between vengeful and vindictive?

Vengeful


Definition:

  • (a.) Vindictive; retributive; revengeful.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) On hearing the Rolf Harris verdicts, I felt vengeful, like many, I expect – condemning this man who led the public a merry dance and enjoyed enormous success while perpetrating abuse.
  • (2) If he was a cartoon character, he’d be … Mourinho was definitely the Grinch – ill-tempered, vengeful, unable to moderate what came out of his mouth, but also sometimes charming and hilariously funny.
  • (3) Thankfully, there is no sign so far of another Oswald Mosley, and the British National party performed poorly in the election, but Gray detects some of the hallmarks of populism – "a diffuse sense of grievance directed at the political class" and "an indeterminate, unlimited hope" – in the 2008 election of the unqualified Boris Johnson as mayor of London, in the carelessly vengeful mood of many voters after the MPs' expenses scandal, and in the three-week wonder of Cleggmania.
  • (4) Whatever else Valérie Trierweiler has been portrayed as – vengeful harpy, ambitious meddler, undignified ex – she is also a woman who has had her heart broken.
  • (5) Individuals "associated with the opposition" had used an FM radio station to broadcast hate speech, even urging "men from one community to commit vengeful sexual violence against women from another community", it said.
  • (6) Either he says "mea culpa" and resigns, almost certainly precipitating a general election; or he condemns the ledgers as fabrications, the work of a vengeful Bárcenas angry about taking the fall for a practice that allegedly all were party to.
  • (7) After much online rancour, Pelevina agreed she would not stand in the elections, but wrote on Facebook that Yashin was a “simple liar, petty and vengeful, and simply an indecent person”.
  • (8) Hopefully it takes more than a throwing knife hurled by a vengeful sexagenarian to take him down.
  • (9) Labour strategists also hope that by postponing the bulk of the pain until April 2010 or the year after, the voters will not be too vengeful in the spring.
  • (10) Perhaps the culprit was skiving off the wedding of a despised but vengeful cousin when he posted.
  • (11) What’s much more questionable is the way the same vengeful attitude is extended to anyone who ever portrayed the last two years of Labour politics in terms of doubt, concern and malaise, and who are being similarly instructed to say sorry for their alleged heresy or be escorted from the building.
  • (12) Acts of intimacy and frail hope in a vortex out there, of mad politics and distant wars come vengefully home to claim those who had simply gone about their lives.
  • (13) Fast forward 10 years and a vengeful ghost of the victim returns to haunt the Iceland manager, who has, rather unusually, become the county's prime minister.
  • (14) The Egyptian blogger, Zeinobia, argued that the attack “will generate more anger and we will have more vengeful actions from the regime, which already did not waste any time in the past [in terms of increasing] oppression and fighting freedoms in the name of counter-terrorism”.
  • (15) "Instead of chasing tax evaders they are chasing me," said Vaxevanis, who had described his original trial as "targeted and vengeful".
  • (16) The vengeful allies after the First World War tried initially to demand Germany pay reparations on that scale, atoning for millions of dead in the trenches, before more than halving their demands.
  • (17) One woman looked her in the eye and described how she lost her sons, aged 12 and nine, when they were unlawfully killed by her vengeful ex-husband in a house fire in which he also died.
  • (18) For the last few months, in preparation for a radio documentary, I've been talking to Comfort's friends and relations and reading through the immense body of work that now lies in the shadow of The Joy of Sex – the poetry that ensured he was spoken of in the same breath as Auden and Spender; the drama about the mine-workers forced to dig a toxic element that irradiates their bones and turns them into vengeful monsters; the pamphlets arguing that peace in the atomic age can only be secured through public disobedience.
  • (19) Trierweiler was seen as a vengeful second wife, staking out her territory.
  • (20) That it is impossible to imagine her successors going in for comparable sharing only underlines, on the other hand, how rapidly the royal family restored its factory settings – absorbing, along the way, the woman who prompted Diana into vengeful activity.

Vindictive


Definition:

  • (a.) Disposed to revenge; prompted or characterized by revenge; revengeful.
  • (a.) Punitive.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Her speech suggested the kind of Republican who would truly "raise the conversation", and if it seems like settling to want an opposition party to simply not be so utterly vindictive, well, yes, I will settle for that.
  • (2) And that's the thing that has gripped Russia and caught the attention of the rest of the world, too: that the Russian government has gone and arrested an idea and is prosecuting through the courts with a vindictiveness the Russian people haven't before seen.
  • (3) Its coverage was so vindictive and blatantly unfair that it succeeded in winning sympathy for the prime minister, not an easy thing to do these days.
  • (4) "It has become apparent that the company's continued refusal to reinstate staff travel concessions for striking members and its vindictive disciplinary measures against Unite members raises new items of dispute," said Woodley and Simpson.
  • (5) Indeed watching the prime minister singling out unemployed youngsters for uniquely punitive measures while pretending it is for their own good, cheered on by a gang of braying chums, it looks less like the behaviour of a national statesman and more like the petty vindictiveness of a schoolyard bully.
  • (6) Her fictional abandonment of her father does not come from vindictiveness.
  • (7) "The legal system has lost all sense of mercy and justice and it has been replaced with punitiveness and vindictiveness," Stinebrickner-Kauffman told Mail Online .
  • (8) Dr Rosemary Gillespie was the object of a “nasty, vindictive and sustained campaign of bullying” from her second day in the job at the UK’s biggest HIV charity, the tribunal heard.
  • (9) It took Harry Guy Bartholomew, first editorial director and then chairman after Rothermere unloaded his shares, to run the business on despotic lines and, with a mixture of flair and vindictive thuggery, create one of the great popular newspapers.
  • (10) Law and Justice are the most vindictive gang in Europe.
  • (11) To express guarded optimism about the Greek deal is not to condone the provocative arrogance of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis or the pointless vindictiveness of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble .
  • (12) Smoldering resentment, chronic anger, self-centeredness, vindictiveness, and a constant feeling of being abused ultimately produce a miserable human being who, as well as being alienated from self, alienates those in the interpersonal sphere.
  • (13) Bullying does happen, but often it's thoughtless rather than vindictive.
  • (14) It’s a form of, I think incredibly dangerous and vindictive industrial sabotage.
  • (15) Yet she hopes that the series will lift the lid on the complex and difficult jobs, help to convey the sheer scale of their work, and demonstrate that current attitudes are "vindictive and unfair".
  • (16) But here are our friends, shouting along with the soap script, playing their parts as the vindictive husband, the philandering wife.
  • (17) Fear hinders us from transforming into a more collaborative and innovative institution.” But, for the moment, some employees say they are still concerned: “Instead of taking opportunity to change course, [management] are being vindictive,” said one staffer.
  • (18) Another person went to the gym at lunch time and couldn’t get out ... One member doesn’t have the right to revoke the pass of another member’s staff.” Chris Bryant, the former shadow leader of the House of Commons, said it was a terrible way to treat staff members, branding it petty and “vindictive, gratuitous nastiness”.
  • (19) Pullman tweeted: "It's one of the most disgusting, mean, vindictive acts of a barbaric government."
  • (20) Kinnock, who supported Miliband in the 2010 leadership contest, rallied to his support on Sunday, telling the Observer : "A hostile press which thought he was a soft target have not forgiven him for proving them wrong – and the vindictiveness will continue."