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One throws water off the roof; the other does not, and only one is a gargoyle.
Also known as: Chimera, Monster carving on a church, Stone creature on a roof
The distinction is functional and almost universally ignored. A gargoyle is a waterspout with a carved outlet; a grotesque is a carved figure that drains nothing. Most of the famous ones are grotesques.
A purely functional distinction, and one the popular usage ignores entirely. The best-known carvings on Notre-Dame are nineteenth-century grotesques rather than gargoyles.
If it has no spout it is not a gargoyle, whatever it is called.
The name comes from the Latin gurgulio, throat, by way of the French gargouille, and refers to the water passing through rather than to anything about the creature depicted.
Protective readings are frequently asserted and poorly evidenced. Keeping water off masonry is a documented purpose; frightening away evil is a proposal.
A carved beast or human figure projecting horizontally from the top of a wall, often with an open mouth and, in a gargoyle, a channel cut through it.