Sour grapes
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Sour grapes is the false denial of desire for something sought but not acquired; to denigrate and feign disdain for that which one could not attain. This metaphor originated from the fable The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop, where the protagonist fox fails to reach some grapes hanging high up on a vine, retreats, and rationalizes that the grapes are probably unripe anyway. The grapes in the original fable are more accurately described as unripe, and the word "unripe" may have been replaced with "sour" by the fable's Victorian translators due to the latter's simpler sound, and because of the former's connotation as an innuendo (ie. an unripe woman). The phenomenon has been seen as a challenge to the rational-actor view within the social sciences, with its significance debated by scholars such as Jon Elster and Steven Lukes.
The phrase is sometimes also used to refer to one expressing, in an unsportsmanlike or ungracious way, anger or frustration at having failed to acquire something (i.e. being a "sore loser"), regardless of whether the party denies their desire for the item. Not including the denial of desire is technically a slipshod extension of the metaphor because it is inconsistent with the phrase's origin in the fable and the notion of the grapes being declared "sour". [1]
[edit] References
- ^ Garner, B., A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, Oxford University Press, 1998 ISBN 0-19-507853-5
[edit] See also
- Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (Cambridge, 1983), a book by Jon Elster describing the phenomenon of adaptive preference formation,
- Sour Grapes, a book of poems by William Carlos Williams
- Sour Grapes, 1998 film written and directed by Larry David
- Sour Grapes, a mystery novel by M.E. Landress
- Sour Grapes, a puscifer song ]
