To add insult to injury
Meaning: To make a bad situation worse by a further offense.
Language: English
Literally: To add insult to injury
Category: Daily Life
Origin: From a Latin fable by Phaedrus in which a bald man, swatting a biting fly, slaps himself and is mocked for it.
More idioms — Daily Life
- Aus dem Häuschen sein — To be beside yourself with excitement.
- No dar pie con bola — To get everything wrong; to do nothing right.
- Capire fischi per fiaschi — To misunderstand completely.
- Avere un chiodo fisso — To be obsessed with one idea.
- Tirar o pai da forca — Said of something done in frantic urgency.
- Гол как сокол (Gol kak sokol) — Dirt poor; without a thing to your name.
More English idioms
- To butter someone up — To flatter someone to win their favor.
- Russian roulette — Any high-risk activity undertaken needlessly, where disaster may strike without warning.
- pull back the curtain — To expose a hidden truth or reality behind an appearance.
- present company excepted — These remarks do not apply to anyone currently present in this conversation.
- on sufferance — Tolerated reluctantly and only because one has no better choice.
- set in stone — Unchangeable and permanent, fixed beyond modification.
From our compliments & insults
- C'est une vraie chèvre — They're hopelessly stubborn and infuriating — a goat that refuses to be moved.
- Casse-pieds — A massive bore or pain in the neck — someone who wears you down with their irritating way…
- Espèce de patate — You dim bulb — a potato being the very picture of inert, unthinking stodginess.