Pyrrhic victory

noun

: a victory that is not worth winning because so much is lost to achieve it

Did you know?

In 279 B.C. Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, a country in northwest Greece, defeated the Romans at the Battle of Ausculum, but lost all of his best officers and many men. He is said to have exclaimed after the battle, "One more such victory and we are lost". Pyrrhic victories are more common than we tend to think. Whenever we win an argument but in so doing manage to offend the friend we were arguing with, or whenever a country invades another country but rouses widespread opposition in surrounding countries in the process, it's probably a Pyrrhic victory that has been achieved.

Examples of Pyrrhic victory in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In the New Hampshire primary that year, Johnson won a narrow, Pyrrhic victory over Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy, who had built his campaign on an anti–Vietnam War platform. —John Fund, National Review, 21 Jan. 2024

After four seasons cycling through alliances and betrayals, the contest over which of Logan Roy’s four children would be sociopathic enough to inherit his empire concluded with a fittingly Pyrrhic victory that left them all stone-faced and bereft. —Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 5 Dec. 2023

Rhymes for Pyrrhic victory

• contradictory
• valedictory