Pyrrhic victory 惨胜_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Pyrrhic victory 惨胜

Reader question:

What does this sentence – Most historians agree that the battle was an Egyptian defeat or a draw or at best a Pyrrhic victory – mean, and in particular what is "pyrrhic victory"?

My comments:

It means the Egyptians probably lost the battle. It was perhaps a draw. At the very best, if the Egyptians won, their own loss was so great that they could hardly find any satisfaction in the victory.

Pyrrhic victory? You could have more or less guessed it, I think. It refers to a victory that has come at a great cost, such a great cost, in fact, that it's perhaps not worth fighting for. Pyrrhic, with a capitalized "P", is after Greek king Pyrrhus (318-272), who gained such a victory against the Romans. Pyrrhus had lost so many men in the battle that when people came to congratulate him for the victory, Pyrrhus said to them: "One more such victory and Pyrrhus is undone."

Hence, Pyrrhic victory.

Having grasped its origin, I hope you'll find this phrase easy to remember. And having learned its story, you'll be able to put Pyrrhic victory into use in the right situations. While we're at it, talking about victory, we might as well touch upon two other kinds of victories for the sake of comparison. One is Cadmean victory, the other moral victory. Cadmean is also Greek in origin. A Cadmean victory is one that has come at ruinous costs to both sides. A moral victory, on the other hand, refers to a situation in which you feel you do the right things and your beliefs are right even though you do not win the game, battle or argument.