add insult to injury

Idioms  

1. Hurt a person's feelings after doing him or her harm; also, make a bad situation worse. For example, Not only did the club refuse him, but it published a list of the rejected applicants—that's adding insult to injury, or The nearest parking space was half a mile away, and then, to add insult to injury, it began to pour: The phrase is an ancient one, even older than its often cited use in the Roman writer Phaedrus's fable of the bald man and the fly. A fly bit the head of a bald man, who, trying to crush it, gave himself a heavy blow. The fly then jeered, “You want to avenge an insect's sting with death; what will you do to yourself, who have added insult to injury?” In English it was first recorded in 1748.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

add insult to injury

To add insult to injury: Jane didn’t even bother telling Steven.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026

To add insult to injury: The company announced the layoffs were due to “low performance.”

From Slate ● Apr. 20, 2026

Higher ticket prices only add insult to injury.

From MarketWatch ● Apr. 6, 2026

Her daughter Sandie thinks the health board's new and caveated admissions add "insult to injury".

From BBC ● Jan. 24, 2026

To add insult to injury, the Pythagoreans soon discovered that the golden ratio, the ultimate Pythagorean symbol of beauly and rationality, was an irrational number.

From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife