English · Idiom Candidate

sour grapes

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Expressing discontent or disparagement due to unsuccessful desires

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

bộc lộ sự không hài lòng vì những mong muốn không thành công

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: grapes that are sour

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

His sour grapes should not be mistaken for an accurate impression of the flavour of Charles's court in December 842.

Their decision to screen live matches regularly on Monday nights was greeted with a mixture of sour grapes and shrewish dismay.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “sour grapes” mean?

Expressing discontent or disparagement due to unsuccessful desires Literally: grapes that are sour

Is “sour grapes” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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