Meaning
Pretended disdain for something you wanted but could not get; dismissing a goal as worthless only after failing to reach it. It is almost always an accusation, criticizing someone for dressing up envy or disappointment as contempt, though people also apply it half-jokingly to themselves. Informal and nearly always accusatory, or self-deprecating when turned on oneself; it implies denial of envy, not genuine distaste. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The ultimate source is Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes, in which the fox, unable to reach the fruit, walks away declaring it sour; Latin versions by Phaedrus carried the story through medieval Europe. The fable entered English print in William Caxton's 1484 translation of Aesop, though Caxton's fox pronounces 'these raisins be sour'. A frequently confused near-neighbour is the Bible's literal proverb 'the fathers have eaten sour grapes' (Jeremiah, Ezekiel), which is unrelated. As a fixed English idiom in roughly its modern form, dictionaries date the phrase to 1750-60 (Dictionary.com), with reference works placing its solidified metaphorical use in the mid-18th century; retellings by Aphra Behn (1687) and Walter Crane (1887) kept the fable in circulation. The story is ancient, but the English phrase itself is an early-modern development.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a sour-grapes attitude
- cry sour grapes
- it's pure sour grapes
- that's just sour grapes
Usage Examples
- Calling the prize meaningless after losing it sounds like sour grapes to me.
- Her insistence that she never wanted the promotion was widely heard as sour grapes.
- He dismissed the whole festival as overrated, which his friends put down to sour grapes.