To "finish" something is to stop because you have reached a goal, or completed a task. When people run a marathon, there is a "finish line" at 42.195 kilometers. If someone crosses the finish line, "they finished the race." If they get tired and can't run the full distance, they "did not finish." It's a transitive verb. The subject is the actor. The object is the thing they completed. "To end" can be a transitive verb (with an object) or an intransitive verb (with no object). First I will discuss the transitive verb. To end something means to stop doing it, or make it stop, or bring it to an end. It doesn't carry the idea of completion. For example: "We are setting a limit on this parliamentary debate. We will end it at 3 pm." "The rain ended the picnic, even though we hadn't finished eating all the food." "The candidate for Senator ended his campaign, because he ran out of money." The subject of the intransitive verb "to end" is the thing that ended. It just means something came to an end, stopped, often naturally. "The movie ended with the couple getting married." "When will this bad weather end? It has been cold and rainy for a week." Compare the transitive and intransitive verbs: "The debate will end at 3 pm." "The chairman will end the debate at 3 pm."

The difference is very subtle, and I think they're largely interchangeable. I'm trying to think of examples where people would only say one or the other: - Finish your food (not _end_) - End the relationship (not _finish_) I think the difference is that, when you "finish" something, there's an obvious, agreed-upon finish. For example, when you finish your food, it's generally understood that the "finish" is when you rin out of food. "Finishing" a race, people just assume that the line at the far end of the track is the "finish", because people agree that the race is 100m long. (I realize I used the word "end in the second example, oops). For "end", there's generally not this agreed upon "end", especially when it refers to time. You don't "finish" a relationship because people don't typically decide to date for a specific amount of time. I wouldn't say this is a definitive explanation of the difference, but hopefully this starts to give you don't intuition.

Finish means to complete. Did you finish/complete your homework? What spot did you finish/complete the tournament in? Since it means complete, it inherently means the end. But to end means to stop. For example: I ended the race before I finished. That means I stopped racing before I completed the race. Confusingly, you also have the noun version of the end. The last part of the race is the end. In the above example, when it says 'I ended the race' it is not entirely synonymous with stop though, because to say 'I stopped the race' would have the connotation that you stopped the entire race, while saying 'I ended the race' has the connotation that you stopped racing. You can end something by finishing it and when you finish something you are ending it, but you can end something without finishing it, while you cannot finish something without ending it. Hopefully that is helpful.