to lose the war
8
5.9
- idiom
:
perder la guerra
- Oh yeah, You think that we lost the war because we had a bad strategy?
Chang isn't just losing the war, he's also losing on the home front.
- Chang isn't just losing the war, he's also losing on the home front.
- And the Northern Alliance was losing the war.
- The shock of the war then the shock of losing the war now, the shock of being unable to recover.
- And anti abortion activists who were extreme won the battle and they lost the war.
- And for me, that was really about this recognition that I was winning the battle, but I was going to lose the war.
- It was tough and he lost the war.
- So on Twitter, you've lost the war or as they say, you know, there are these two Russian soldiers having a smoke in Warsaw.
Examples
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We have lost the war on drugs the same way we have lost the war on poverty.
Blog text (1) -
We have lost a battle, but have not lost the war.
Blog text (1) -
What if we lose the war?
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What I discovered caused me to win the argument but lose the war.
Academic text (2005) -
Your only chance for a peace agreement comes if Israel loses the war.
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- In my opinion, america lost the war in Vietnam because of the media.
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We lost the war in Afghanistan, we lost the war in Ukraine.
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They say we may have lost the battle but we didn't lose the war.
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The shock of losing the war forced elites to adjust their worldview temporarily in order to survive.
Academic text (1996) -
You may have won the battle, but you lose the war in the end.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to ultimately fail or be defeated' is directly derivable from combining 'lose' (to fail to win) with 'war' (a large-scale conflict); a B1 learner who knows both words would readily understand this composed sense. The added nuance about losing the overall conflict despite smaller successes is a pragmatic extension of the literal composition rather than an idiomatic shift, and similar constructions exist cross-linguistically, supporting full transparency.
Etymology
The phrase lose the war comes from the image of an army that can win a few fights but still lose the whole war when the larger plan fails. So it now means 'to fail in the larger goal' even if you have small wins.