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

To atone, Ana-Maria says, they must eat sour grapes.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 4, 2025

She said the leaked video was down to "sour grapes" and that "not everybody has the same sense of service and duty and responsibility".

From BBC • Oct. 29, 2025

Was it sour grapes, then, when Jamie Dimon called out private-credit firms over the recent spate of bankruptcies hitting banks?

From Barron's • Oct. 24, 2025

If there were any sour grapes over his ouster, he didn't let it show.

From Salon • Dec. 12, 2024

“Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavour of sour grapes, upon my soul and honour! Not being bound to her, can you not detach yourself from her?—I told you I should be disagreeable.”

From "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens