Torture is to cause pain, to someone and is more often associated with physical torture, though it can also be associated with mental pain. They tortured him for hours, with hot pokers. The pain was pure torture. Torment is purely emotional, we torment people with words, thoughts, suggestions, etc etc. Or things can torment us emotionally, They tormented her every day in the school playground, calling her fat and ugly. His words tormented me..

In my experience, I find it useful to memorize sentences to remember vocabulary words, especially those words which I find to be confusing and seemingly similar. Example: He will torment him emotionally with physical torture!

@ Dark Panther 'Torture' is not only used to mean physical pain. We can use both 'torture' and 'torment' to mean make someone feel extremely unhappy or anxious: He spent his life tormented (=tortured) by the memories of his childhood.

"torture" and "torment" have the same meanings: The action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something.