add insult to injury
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.89 in modern English
29
Scrabble Score
17
Letters
5
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "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 line crossed over an iron bridge spanning Ludgate Hill itself [...] neatly obliterating any view of St Paul's from Ludgate Circus and Fleet Street. A thousand people had put their names to a petition against the bridge. To add insult to injury it carried a small thicket of railway signals as well as regular steam trains."
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.
Inflected Forms
adds insult to injury (present, singular)
adding insult to injury (participle, present)
added insult to injury (participle, past)
added insult to injury (past)