Mock vs Cynical - What's the difference?
mock | cynical |
An imitation, usually of lesser quality.
Mockery, the act of mocking.
* Bible, Proverbs xiv. 9
A practice exam set by an educating institution to prepare students for an important exam.
To mimic, to simulate.
* Shakespeare
* Shakespeare
To make fun of by mimicking, to taunt.
* Bible, 1 Kings xviii. 27
* Gray
To tantalise, and disappoint (the hopes of).
* Bible, Judges xvi. 13
* 1597 , William Shakespeare, Henry IV , Part II, Act V, Scene III:
* 1603 , William Shakespeare, Othello , Act III, Scene III:
* 1667 , John Milton, Paradise Lost :
* Milton
* 1765 , Benjamin Heath, A revisal of Shakespear's text , page 563 (a commentary on the "mocke the meate" line from Othello):
* 1812 , The Critical Review or, Annals of Literature , page 190:
Imitation, not genuine; fake.
Of or relating to the belief that human actions are motivated only or primarily by base desires or selfishness.
*(Samuel Johnson) (1709-1784)
*:I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received.
Skeptical of the integrity, sincerity, or motives of others.
Bitterly or jadedly distrustful or contemptuous; mocking.
*
*:He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark-for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.
Showing contempt for accepted moral standards by one's actions.
*
*:When he, at Neergard's cynical suggestion, had consented to exploit his own cluband had consented to resign from it to do so, he had every reason to believe that Neergard meant to either mulct them heavily or buy them out. In either case, having been useful to Neergard, his profits from the transaction would have been considerable.
Like the actions of a snarling dog.
:
As adjectives the difference between mock and cynical
is that mock is imitation, not genuine; fake while cynical is of or relating to the cynics, a sect of ancient greek philosophers who believed virtue to be the only good and self-control to be the only means of achieving virtue.As a noun mock
is an imitation, usually of lesser quality.As a verb mock
is to mimic, to simulate.mock
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (obsolete)Noun
(en noun)- (Crashaw)
- Fools make a mock at sin.
- He got a B in his History mock , but improved to an A in the exam.
Verb
(en verb)- To see the life as lively mocked' as ever / Still sleep ' mocked death.
- Mocking marriage with a dame of France.
- Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud.
- Let not ambition mock their useful toil.
- Thou hast mocked me, and told me lies.
- And with his spirit sadly I survive, / to mock the expectations of the world; / to frustrate prophecies, and to raze out / rotten opinion
- "It is the greene-ey'd Monster, which doth mocke / The meate it feeds on."
- Why do I overlive? / Why am I mocked with death, and lengthened out / to deathless pain?
- He will not / Mock us with his blest sight, then snatch him hence.
- ‘Mock’ certainly never signifies to loath. Its common signification is, to disappoint.
- The French revolution indeed is a prodigy which has mocked the expectations both of its friends and its foes. It has cruelly disappointed the fondest hopes of the first, nor has it observed that course which the last thought that it would have pursued.