sour grapes

1. 1.

   disparagement of something that is unattainable

   Broaderdisparagement

Questions about sour grapes

What does sour grapes mean?

sour grapes means "disparagement of something that is unattainable".

Is sour grapes a common word?

sour grapes is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.