Meaning
Said of someone whose own wrongdoing looks small beside the wrong others have done to them: a claim to be chiefly the injured party - less blameworthy than the people accusing or mistreating you, even if not entirely innocent. Literary and slightly formal, and frequently tongue-in-cheek when the speaker's innocence is debatable; keep the comparative shape, which carries the meaning. Regional use: General English (Shakespearean allusion).
Origin
The phrase is verbatim from King Lear, Act 3 Scene 2: raving on the heath in the storm after his daughters Goneril and Regan have stripped him of his retinue and shelter, Lear cries, 'I am a man / More sinn'd against than sinning.' Christine Ammer's American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms identifies exactly this moment - the king on the heath in the storm - as the source, and her Dictionary of Cliches adds that the underlying idea is older than Shakespeare's wording, though his line fixed the formula. George Bernard Shaw liked it enough to use it in at least two plays, Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1899) and Fanny's First Play (1911), and it has remained a stock way for compromised public figures to plead that their critics have done worse.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- I am more sinned against than sinning
- more sinned against than sinner
- she is more sinned against than sinning
Usage Examples
- Yes, he fudged the expenses, but after the board sold his division out from under him he could fairly claim to be more sinned against than sinning.
- The manager called herself more sinned against than sinning, though the leaked emails suggested she had started the feud in the first place.
- In her memoir the retired senator casts herself as more sinned against than sinning, blaming the press for every scandal that dented her long career.