sour grapes

American  

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.

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sour grapes British  

noun

1. (functioning as singular) the attitude of affecting to despise something because one cannot or does not have it oneself

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sour grapes Idioms  

1. 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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Etymology

Origin of sour grapes

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

Example Sentences

Sour grapes, retorts Gallo, whose distribution power has helped the Turning Leaf line make inroads into Kendall-Jackson's markets.

From Time Magazine Archive

"Sour grapes," whispered a pretty miss of sixteen to her elder sister, as they stood apart from the others and watched the effect of the oration.

From Marguerite Verne by Armour, Rebecca Agatha

"Sour grapes," as the fox said when he could not reach them.

From Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases With a Copious Index of Principal Words by Preston, Thomas

"Sour grapes, but you are right to put the best face on matters."

From Sowing and Reaping by Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins

Here hope was called away, and Emilia saucily murmured, "Sour grapes!"

From Malbone: an Oldport Romance by Higginson, Thomas Wentworth