What's the difference between wailing and whiling?
Wailing
Definition:
(p. pr. & vb. n.) of Wail
Example Sentences:
(1) You couldn't get much more bohemian than the music playing in this room of tiny round tables, first French crooner Serge Gainsbourg and then cabaret freak Scott Walker wailing of their obelisk-size pain.
(2) Every now and then some rich Oga or Madam comes along in their bulletproof cars and wailing sirens, and distorts the delicate equilibrium of this body of traffic.
(3) In groups 1 and 2, clusters of cylindrical tubules, typical of the male gland, decreased in number and disappeared almost completely 2 wailed in these two groups throughout the remaining period of experiment.
(4) "Barcelona's habit of playing midfielders in defence will do them more harm than good," he wails.
(5) "Gnnmph, I can't 'ave it 'ere, I 'aven't 'ad my enema," wails a labouring housewife, straining fruitlessly on a communal tenement bog as horrified neighbours look on in their rollers.
(6) There were moments when music seemed to struggle to be heard over the tocking of iPod clickwheels and the wailing of record company executives.
(7) The army cleared itself of responsibility for the killing of a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach three weeks ago during an artillery barrage after many Israelis were shaken by television pictures of a traumatised child wailing over the body of her father.
(8) While Arsenal fans have spent the last nine years gnashing and wailing, Hull supporters have cheered the incredible resurrection of their club, as David Conn explains here .
(9) Some family members, after years of begging for mercy and receiving none, broke down and wailed.
(10) The big story Once upon a time the Oscar ceremony was a comforting drone punctuated only by the odd song-and-dance routine and the banshee wailing of overwhelmed best actress award winners.
(11) Elsewhere on the carpet Quentin Tarantino is having a bop with Uma Thurman (again), Xavier Dolan is wearing an outrageous tux (again) and the boring normal people at the barriers are wailing for stars' attention (again).
(12) Later that night, Lola wailed in the street as the police prised her baby from her arms and led her into custody.
(13) Family members who had gathered at a hotel in Beijing wailed as they heard the news.
(14) Naderi offered his prayers to Dhu’s family at the end of his evidence, saying: “I wish I was able to pick up any abnormal signs that may have made a difference.” Carol Roe ran crying from the courtroom, her wail flowing back through the door to where Naderi was seated in the witness box.
(15) Sorrowful wails and sobs resounded as thousands of Rwandans packed the country's main sports stadium to mark the 20th anniversary of the beginning of a devastating 100-day genocide.
(16) Sandy breaking out of the compound BB3 Sandy's insistence on his quirkiness got rather wearing, so it was just as well he made a bid for escape, with his new best friend Alex wailing, "Be careful, Sandy, be careful!"
(17) Starbucks admitted that while it can (quite incredibly) claim that its 700 UK stores are not profitable, through wails of what seemed like crocodile tears, its 30 coffee traders in Switzerland make an enormous 20% profit margin despite never seeing a coffee bean; a fact that the committee could not have helped noting might be related to the 12% tax it pays in that state.
(18) Their players are distraught and making a mess of everything, while the TV producer here is having an absolute ball picking out wailing Brazilians in the crowd.
(19) Another shows a scene of villagers wailing with grief: “Villagers grieve as their friend is put into the ambulance,” the voiceover says.
(20) Among those who finally decided that Kobani was on the brink was Mukdad Bozan, travelling with his wife, a wailing baby and three bedraggled older children.
Whiling
Definition:
(p. pr. & vb. n.) of While
Example Sentences:
(1) For all that it might suggest seaside breaks and afternoons whiled away on the pier, the Norfolk town of Great Yarmouth does not feel like a happy place.
(2) Any such levity, however, is leavened by the tacit acknowledgment that existence is futile, and we are all just bags of flesh and bones whiling away the days before death and putrefaction sets in.
(3) In Le Bistro cafe in the converted waiting room of Rüschlikon station, from where the village's rich residents can be whisked to downtown Zurich in 15 minutes, none of the clientele whiling away the afternoon have met Glasenberg but all are happy to chat about his impact on the community.
(4) Whiling away their time in the stylish cafes of Tunis's northern suburbs, some former ministers are ready to defend their records, arguing that they were unaware of the level of human rights abuses taking place in Ben Ali's jails, and that their skills could now be put to good use to "serve their country".
(5) Now he whiles away his hours crossing off the administrative chores from his to-do list.
(6) But his friends say that this is where he has whiled away his afternoons after college since arriving in the UK, sometimes having tea or playing dominoes at the Middle East Shisha, a traditional tea house off London Road.
(7) It was one of many potential hurdles to navigate as we whiled away the hours before their show.
(8) 7.38pm BST While we're whiling away the minutes before the big game, I've uploaded four pretty pictures of classics past.
(9) In the next few days, while his colleague Steve McManaman whiles away the time watching films and Nicolas Anelka and Geremi are busy on their Playstations, Redondo and Raúl will be reading bound volumes of paper known as books.
(10) Last Friday, having spent a long night at a count in Falkirk, I whiled away a bleary-eyed afternoon on George Square in Glasgow.
(11) Mary S Lovell's group portrait, The Mitford Girls, has gone through eight reprints in two years, and the Hons Cupboard, where the girls whiled away winter afternoons in the family house, is as much a part of upper-class English literary folklore as Brideshead Revisited or Anthony Powell's Kenneth Widmerpool.
(12) While Koum survived a tough schooling in a village outside Kiev and dropped out of San Jose State University, Acton, a Stanford computer science graduate, whiled away his time playing golf in suburban Florida.
(13) Much of it may, though, be down to gallons of early-morning coffee, and the fact she was unable to sleep after winning the prize, so had whiled away the time playing computer games.
(14) And it's spawned a sub-category of Panini chat that, to the initiated, whiles away the countdown to the desperately-anticipated start of the World Cup.
(15) As a result of these differences Inglis faces a minimum of nine years in prison, whiles Gilderdale was given a 12 month non-custodial sentence.
(16) I had a lot of training in personnel and management issues, whiling away many hours investigating theories of team building and leadership, which stood me in good stead for leading a team of teachers.