The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pyrrhic \Pyr"rhic\, a. [L. pyrrhichius, Gr. ? belonging to the ? (sc. ?) a kind of war dance.]
Of or pertaining to an ancient Greek martial dance. `` ye have the pyrrhic dance as yet.''
--Byron.-
(Pros.) Of or pertaining to a pyrrhic, or to pyrrhics; containing pyrrhic; as, a pyrrhic verse. Pyrrhic victory [From Pyrrhus, king of Epirus.],
a victory in which the winning side sustains very heavy losses.
any act supposedly benefitting the actor, for which the costs outweight the benefits.
Wikipedia
A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Someone who wins a Pyrrhic victory has been victorious in some way. However, the heavy toll negates any sense of achievement or profit.
Pyrrhic Victory is the third studio album by Dutch band Intwine. It was released on October 9, 2006 by V2.
Usage examples of "pyrrhic victory".
It felt to Sturgeon as though the battle in defense of the high ground to Haven's northeast was a pyrrhic victory.
The exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one-in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable.
The exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one -- in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable.
But for the British, though they now controlled Lake Champlain, it was a Pyrrhic victory: they had sustained losses far beyond what Arnolds flotilla might have been expected to inflict, and the season was too advanced for them to attempt to subdue Fort Ticonderoga and extend their supply lines into New York.
But for the British, though they now controlled Lake Champlain, it was a Pyrrhic victory: they had sustained losses far beyond what Arnold’.
He was, indeed, cheating death now, but he knew it was, at best, a Pyrrhic victory which, his father had taught him, was no victory at all.
But even if the Phinons destroyed the Earth, the Phinons were dead in the ultimate Pyrrhic victory.
And because the reproductive impulse is the oldest and least rational of all our primitive drives, the least amenable to reason, there, I suspect, is where the battle has been fought and where we may well have won the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories.
Galveston had eluded pursuit and reported in, but Bangor had been lost in the strike against Orland, and that was a Pyrrhic victory at best.
The manipulation of the human desire for peace had backfired, their collective rage turning the enemy back, though at best it was a Pyrrhic victory.
But his was a Pyrrhic victory, and before his messengers had had time to reach Edinburgh with news of his triumph, his mauled and battered army had been almost extirpated at the hands of Eannruig of Macintosh and Clan Chattan, who had been marching a few days behind the Campbells and Siol Alpine.
Still she'd fought against the more terrifying of her ancestors, winning for a time a Pyrrhic victory which had lasted through childhood.