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View synonyms for sour grapes

sour grapes

plural noun

  1. pretended disdain for something one does not or cannot have:

    She said that she and her husband didn't want to join the club anyway, but it was clearly sour grapes.



sour grapes

noun

  1. functioning as singular the attitude of affecting to despise something because one cannot or does not have it oneself
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012


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Word History and Origins

Origin of sour grapes1

First recorded in 1750–60; in allusion to Aesop's fable concerning the fox who, in an effort to save face, dismissed as sour those grapes he could not reach
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Word History and Origins

Origin of sour grapes1

from a fable by Aesop
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Idioms and Phrases

Disparaging what one cannot obtain, as in The losers' scorn for the award is pure sour grapes . This expression alludes to the Greek writer Aesop's famous fable about a fox that cannot reach some grapes on a high vine and announces that they are sour. In English the fable was first recorded in William Caxton's 1484 translation, “The fox said these raisins be sour.”
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Example Sentences

And they either get a case of sour grapes or they get on the train.

He attributes the moniker to sour grapes and professional jealousy.

Sour grapes have led the once-visionary musician to become embittered.

I reckon, I've heerd my mother read out a text, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and th' children's teeth are set on edge."

The sour grapes of Champagne spread dysentery in the Prussian army.

The vintage of 1427 had been bad, that of the following year was poor and weak—more like sour grapes than wine.

Our ancestors have eaten sour grapes, and their childrens' teeth are set on edge.

She thought of sour grapes, and of the fox who had lost his tail.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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