Word for phyrric victory

[KenCunningham]

Following on from the 'Devils' Advocate' thread, can anyone think of a word to accurately convey the meaning behind phyrric victory?

 

[Stella740pl]

Oh! And I didn't really notice that misspelling, just searched the dictionary on the correct spelling - "pyrrhic", then posted results.
And then was your comment.

 

[craigsboyd]

Well, I didn't know what the word or phrase meant until this thread. Thank you all.

http://www.sweetpotatosoftware.com

 

[GwydionM]

Phyrric = cost-ineffective? The point is not that the cost was high, but that it was too high for the King's wider purposes.

If the US killed bin Laden and it cost 1000 marines, that would be a high cost but hardly phyrric.

------------------------------
An old man who lives in the UK

 

[Genimuse]

That's a political question, if there ever was one.

(Though there's little question that it wouldn't be phyrric. Pyrrhic, perhaps, but again, a question of politics, not linguistics.)

 

[Mr3Putt]

Pyrrhic... won at too high a cost.

As the OP implied: How to explain the term to one who does not know it... certainly not all here, even E[sup]2[/sup] and CC knew what an "adjective" was at birth. What other words were used to describe the duty of "adjectives" while learning grammar? Your teacher certainly did not tell you that an adjective was an adjective, did she?

I agree with CC that there is probably not any adequate, one-word synonym for the word, and it is a word that many (I'd venture not most) learn in middle schools.

One cannot always fall back on the simple meaning of their words to be understood. Were that one's position, I would wish them well on their lonely life's journey.

[red]Note:[/red] [gray]The above comments are the opinionated ravings of Mr3Putt. As such, Mr3Putt accepts no responsibility for damages, real or contrived, resulting from acceptance of his opinions as fact.[/gray]

 

[craigsboyd]

Mr3Putt and others have made some good points on explaining, or coming up with an alternative for, a given word or phrase. I've heard it questioned elsewhere, how would one explain colors to a person that has been blind from birth. Blue, Red, White, etc. are all somewhat problematic since you cannot just show the person what you mean by pointing to the blue sky or showing them a red rose or displaying white linen sheets on a bed. To solve this problem different methods are usually suggested using one of the four remaining senses. If it were touch then the methods would include such things as dipping the visually challenged person's hand into a pail of cool water for blue, exposing their hand to something hot for red, allowing them to feel cotton or down feathers for white. In the end, the definition or alternatives are always built from things that are known or can be known. While anyone of these could not be held up as a perfect alternative or exact replica of the original, they are, to me, most effective at conveying something that could not have otherwise been conveyed.

There is however a personal nature to this, and how one would do the same for the masses as a whole is still more problematic. Through some gentle questioning one could perhaps find a place and time in the subject's life where a "Pyrrhic Victory" of sorts happened or was known about and a particular word or phrase that the subject associates that memory with. But, to come up with a word or phrase that does "Pyrrhic Victory" justice for the majority is not easy. It would likely have more to do with the context in which the alternative was used than the alternative itself that would get the general meaning across. Most of the above submissions as alternatives would no doubt do just fine given the correct and sufficient amount of context to go with.

As to why such an alternative would be needed outside the scope of education. There is the matter of writers needing other ways to say the same thing. Alternatives need exist, lest the author find himself/herself using the word or phrase to the point of redundancy and greatly distracting their dear reader or at the very least boring them to tears. Is this not one of the main reasons that the Thesaurus exists?

I, being perhaps the only person who did not know the word or phrase before this thread, am in a unique position to say that the alternatives so far sugested were sufficient to give me the general and fairly accurate idea of what is meant when "Pyrrhic Victory" is used. I found the definitions from the dictionaries by Stella740pl to be quite helpful. I was in need of an alternative that was built from things I already knew.

http://www.sweetpotatosoftware.com

 

[KenCunningham]

I'm only glad someone got something out of it Craig!

 

[tsdragon]

Ken: I apologize. You misunderstood my intention. The angry face was intended to be wryly humorous.


Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[KenCunningham]

Tracy - no apology asked for or necessary. I might well have been having a bad day at the office! Pax.