Meaning
A win so costly to the winner that it is barely distinguishable from losing. The damage may be in money, manpower, reputation, or political capital, and the phrase implies the act of winning has crippled the victor's ability to go on. Rather formal or written in register, and common in commentary on lawsuits, elections, takeover battles, and campaigns. Learned and often ironic; the P is capitalised because the word is an eponym of King Pyrrhus. Regional use: General English (classical allusion); formal register.
Origin
The allusion is ancient, the English phrase surprisingly recent. King Pyrrhus of Epirus beat the Romans at Heraclea (280 BC) and Asculum (279 BC), but lost so many officers and men that, according to Plutarch, he answered congratulations with words rendered 'If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined' (or 'one more such victory and we are lost'); the parallel version in Orosius has him returning to Epirus without a single soldier. Rome's reserves of manpower meant the losses were fatal to him, not to them. Despite the fame of the story, the fixed English phrase belongs to the late nineteenth century: the Online Etymology Dictionary dates the adjective Pyrrhic, 'of or pertaining to King Pyrrhus of Epirus', to 1885, 'usually in the phrase Pyrrhic victory', and Dictionary.com likewise gives 1880-85. It is unrelated to the older noun pyrrhic, the Greek war dance (1590s) and the metrical foot (1620s), which comes from a different Greek root.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a Pyrrhic win
- prove a Pyrrhic victory
- Pyrrhic success
- win a Pyrrhic victory
Usage Examples
- The company won the case but ran up legal bills that made the verdict a Pyrrhic victory.
- Taking the leadership by a single vote, after alienating half the caucus, soon looked like a Pyrrhic victory.
- Critics called the redevelopment a Pyrrhic victory: the developers got their land and lost their good name.