What's the difference between wishful and wistful?

Wishful


Definition:

  • (a.) Having desire, or ardent desire; longing.
  • (a.) Showing desire; as, wishful eyes.
  • (a.) Desirable; exciting wishes.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) I wish to clarify that for the period 1998 to 2002 I was employed by Fifa to work on a wide range of matters relating to football,” Platini wrote.
  • (2) "The Republic genuinely wishes Northern Ireland well and that includes the 12.5% corporate tax rate," he said.
  • (3) When asked why the streets of London were not heaving with demonstrators protesting against Russia turning Aleppo into the Guernica of our times, Stop the War replied that it had no wish to add to the “jingoism” politicians were whipping up against plucky little Russia .
  • (4) Following the hypothesis that infertile patients may present emotional conflicts with regard to the wish of having a child, psychodynamic interviews were carried out with 116 infertile couples concomitantly with their first consultation at the Sterility Department.
  • (5) Last November he bluntly warned EU chiefs he could, if he wished, “flood Europe” with refugees.
  • (6) But I don't wish to be too hard on the judge for not taking that view.
  • (7) And any Labour commitment on spending is fatally undermined by their deficit amnesia.” Davey widened the attack on the Tories, following a public row this week between Clegg and Theresa May over the “snooper’s charter”, by accusing his cabinet colleague Eric Pickles of coming close to abusing his powers by blocking new onshore developments against the wishes of some local councils.
  • (8) This search represents movement beyond the significance of infantile wish-fulfillment aspects of religiosity toward the broader domain of ego functioning and quality of object relations.
  • (9) It’s clear which way the ultra-right community around Ukip wishes to go: their timelines are full of praise for Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders , and blazing with imagery – both real and fake – of migrant riots in France and Sweden.
  • (10) The content and dynamics of two 11-session psychotherapy groups led by physicians for 18 adult patients with insulin-dependent diabetes are described as a guide for others wishing to use this form of treatment.
  • (11) Management and treatment issues are surveyed, such as the necessity to recognize that in some adolescents violence erupts not from narcissitic rage but from strong wishes for affectionate contact.
  • (12) "Plymouth Argyle is a proper football club and I wish them well," said Hughton.
  • (13) Many cases before the commissioner remain unresolved, although those who wish to pursue matters to the tribunal as part of the transitional arrangements will not have to pay an additional fee to appeal to the tribunal.
  • (14) It is indispensable to establish a close cooperation between the public health authorities and the private physician, and we therefore wish to sincerely thank all colleagues and Public Health Officers for their collaboration.
  • (15) An accurate portrait of BLS and ACLS instructors is crucial for organizations such as the American Heart Association if they wish to attract and retain instructors.
  • (16) If you can't give them everything at once, you may be able to satisfy at least some of the items on their wish list.
  • (17) Despite fulfilling a boyhood wish to play for Milan when he returned to Italy, the striker admitted he erred in taking his career back to Serie A, having had a controversial spell at Internazionale before City recruited him for £17.5m in August 2010.
  • (18) We wish to thank once again all the Chinese people and people around the world who have supported Beijing 2022 in this extraordinary bid journey.” Earlier, the president Xi threw his weight behind China’s bid, promising the “strongest support” for the Beijing Games in a one-minute video address to the IOC delegates.
  • (19) Fitzgibbon notes that these documents had been tabled contrary to the wishes of the defence sub-commitee.
  • (20) Early work showed a relationship between these two molecules, which we wished to further document, in particular because of the growing realization of the functional importance of CD28 in some T cell activation pathways.

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.