the.com/sour grapes
Pretending you never wanted the thing that just rejected you.
means Dismissing or badmouthing something as worthless only after you've failed to get it.
from Straight out of Aesop's fable: a fox tries and fails to reach a tempting bunch of grapes hanging high on the vine, then struts off declaring they were probably sour anyway. The phrase entered English as a tidy shorthand for that exact bit of self-protective face-saving, and it's stayed put for centuries without needing updating — the fox's trick is evidently timeless.
- origin
- Aesop fox calls unreachable grapes probably sour anyway
- psychology term
- cognitive dissonance reduction, basically self-protective lying
- tell
- the insult arrives suspiciously fast after losing
- opposite move
- sweet lemons, pretending what you got was the goal