to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory
1
9.6
- idiom
- Informal
:
perder una victoria segura
- Matt Cassel promptly threw an interception after the Chiefs won the coin toss, once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
So how did he snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
- So how did he snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
- And at the last moment, Tolkien Timur Khan snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
- But what it's doing is snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and it's pulling pretty hard to grab it in this instance.
Examples
-
Don't be like my taxi company, which remains blissfully unaware of how they managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Blog text (8) -
The Kentucky Democratic Party has a history of "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
Blog text (27) -
Washington wants to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!
Fiction book (2000) -
The point is, he may already have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Blog text (3) -
"It seems we are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
Blog text (10) -
Once again, the Republican Establishment has nominated someone who will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Blog text (12) -
Mitt Romney was a good candidate, but the Republican Party once again found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Blog text (19) -
But once again, John Boehner and the other shining pillars of Republican resolve are intent upon snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Blog text (13) -
McCain charges that his opponent's position (which he and his supporters often misrepresent as "precipitous withdrawal") would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Academic text (2008) -
The team was winning the match but snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with a last-minute error.
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
snatch + defeat + from + the + jaws + of + victory
Although the individual words are familiar, the overall meaning relies on an extended ironic metaphor ('jaws of victory') and a reversal of expected roles (you 'snatch defeat' despite being in a winning position), so the sense 'to lose a seemingly certain victory' is not directly deducible from the parts. This complex, image-based idiom is language-specific and would be unpredictable for an average B1 learner who has not encountered the phrase before.
Etymology
The idiom snatch defeat from the jaws of victory gives a clear picture: imagine a prize stuck in an animal's open jaws of victory, almost yours, but then you snatch a defeat instead by making a big mistake. That's why it means 'to lose a sure win'.