add insult to injury

verb

Etymology

Derived from the fables of Phaedrus in the first century CE. The story was of a bald man who swats at a fly which has just landed on his head, but instead hits himself on the head. The fly comments, "You wished to kill me for a touch. What will you do to yourself since you have added insult to injury?" (quid facies tibi, Iniuriae qui addideris contumeliam?) The actual wording appears in English from the middle of the 18th century.

Definitions

  1. To further a loss with mockery or indignity

    To further a loss with mockery or indignity; to worsen an already unfavorable situation.

    • As if the hostile takeover weren't enough, to add insult to injury they scrapped ninety percent of our products and replaced them with their own.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for add insult to injury. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA