What's the difference between a “script” and an “application”?

Question

I\'m referring to distinctions such as in this answer:

...bash isn\'t for writing applications it\'s for, well, scripting. So sure, your application m

Answer 1

@Jeff's answer is good. My favorite explanation is

Many (most?) scripting languages are interpreted, and few compiled languages are considered to be scripting languages, but the question of compiled vs. interpreted is only loosely connected to the question of "scripting" vs. "serious" languages.

A lot of the problem here is that "scripting" is a pretty vague designation -- it means a language that's convenient for writing scripts in, as opposed to writing "full-blown programs" (or applications). But how does one distinguish a complex script from a simple application? That's an essentially unanswerable question. Generally, a script is a series of commands applied to some set of data, possibly in a user-defined order... but then, one could stretch that description to apply to Photoshop, which is clearly a major application. Scripts are generally smaller than applications, do some well-defined thing and are "simpler" to use, and typically can be decomposed into a clear series of sub-operations, but all of these things are subjective.

Referenced from here.