Meaning
To achieve a narrow, immediate victory that damages your wider position or long-term interests. The saying warns that success in a single contest - an argument, a deal, a lawsuit - can cost you the larger campaign, because the resources, goodwill, or leverage spent winning it can never be recovered. Often paired with, or used to gloss, 'Pyrrhic victory'. Favour it where the cost of winning is the point, rather than the defeat itself. Regional use: General English (military-strategy maxim).
Origin
A proverbial distillation of strategic wisdom rather than a quotation from any one author. The idea crystallises around King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army beat the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC while absorbing losses it could not replace. Plutarch, relaying a report attributed to Dionysius, has Pyrrhus answer congratulations after Asculum with the warning that another such victory would ruin him, rendered in English as 'If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined'. The classical shorthand for the idea, 'Pyrrhic victory', was already in this catalogue; the plain-English maxim now circulates in commentary on law, business, and sport, where it counsels against winning the skirmish at the cost of the campaign. No authoritative first citation for the exact English wording appears in the freely consulted sources, so the dating rests on the classical record rather than a print attestation.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- win every battle but lose the war
- winning the battle but losing the war
- won the battle but lost the war
Usage Examples
- The paper won its libel suit against the critic, but the disclosures it forced cost it two sources and a columnist - a textbook case of winning the battle but losing the war.
- Hiring the star developer away from your biggest partner may win the battle for talent and lose the war for contracts.
- In argument as in chess, you can win the battle but lose the war if every exchange burns goodwill you will need later.