I see no difference between the two as far as the meanings from various dictionaries are concerned.
From Cambridge dictionary:
Sweat::
the clear, salty liquid that you pass through your skin:
The dancers were dripping with/pouring with sweat after a morning's rehearsal.
By the time we'd climbed to the top of the hill, we were covered in sweat.
She wiped the beads (= drops) of sweat from her forehead.
Perspire::
polite word for sweat (= to pass liquid through the skin):
He was perspiring in his thick woollen suit.
The journalists and camera crews began to perspire in the heat as they stood waiting for the president to appear.
But recently I heard from someone that only animals sweat but humans don't, humans perspire. So I googled for it found this. I quote an interesting answer from the link
He must be quite an old-fashioned English person. I remember this view
being expressed by my grandmother, who was born in about 1885. I
haven't heard it recently.
Is it justified to say animals sweat, humans perspire? The only difference that I see between the two words is that the latter is more formal version of the former. Is the last quote that says such difference existed in the olden days correct?
Best Answer
This is a comment about attitudes at the end of the 19th Century. Various versions were documented in the 1880's, but the general form is:
Did ladies sweat? Of course they did, but it would have been very impolite to draw attention to this.
Did men sweat? Of course they did, and it was OK to talk about it, but you had to use a more refined word: perspire.
In these enlightened times, both men and women are allowed to sweat, but it is usually considered impolite to point out to somebody that they are sweating.