Easy Or Pyrrhic?

Diary, ESL, Reflections, vocabulary 2 Minutes


I just learned the word pyrrhic, an adjective, meaning “won at too great a cost to have been worthwhile for the victor”. It is pronounced “pirik”. People always tell me that I pronounce “i” as if it is “ee”, a typical non-native speaker’s mistake. I have always wanted to improve my pronunciation, but I’ve never had the time to do it. Or probably I’ve never had the motivation to change my accent. I’ve observed that a non-native speaker’s enthusiasm in learning English plummets as soon as he or she starts to live in an English speaking country, for some inexplicable reason.

Let me think of some unfortunate victors who have pyrrhic victories. I am going to talk about my narcissistic family again–that’s an eternal topic for me. Whenever I have nothing else to write, I will think about them. After all the gaslighting, belittling, isolating, triangulating and other psychological tricks they played on me, it is the least I can do to write about them, isn’t it?

My father won a great victory when he married my mother since she was considered a cute girl who conformed to the beauty standards and she was an assistant professor in a rural college. Little did he know what he got himself into. My mother disliked house chores and hated cooking, and my father had zero interest in helping her. My mother hated children, and my father couldn’t care less. The problem was that they both wanted to have children for some unexplained reason. They quarreled endlessly and couldn’t stand each other. I really think it was not a worthwhile victory for my father.

Well, the meaning of pyrrhic is actually different from what is presented in this story. In the story, my father won the victory first and the worthlessness came much later. The meaning of pyrrhic is a little different. It involves costly operations to gain the initial victory. So I am going to think of an incident that is closer to its meaning.

I think many immigrants feel that their victory is pyrrhic. I heard it many times from many different people. One of them is Y, who used to have a little store in the Woodbridge shopping mall, several miles from Edison, where I live. Every time I went to the mall, I would stop by his store to chat. He told me about his pyrrhic victory many times. When he came to America, he really thought it was a victory for him and he was on his way to a better life. Then it happened that his wife left him and his store failed in California. Heartbroken, he moved to the East Coast, first working in Maryland then working in New Jersey and after that owning the store he had worked in. So he has a pyrrhic victory. He would have had a more peaceful family life back home, where it is more difficult for a woman to leave a marriage.

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Published by haoyando

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21 thoughts on “Easy Or Pyrrhic?”

  1. It’s always odd to me that people who don’t like children or are clearly not going to make good parents always insist on having kids. I’ve seen that happen so many times. Also, now I learnt a new word, thanks for that.

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    1. So true. My parents belong to these people who should never be allowed to have kids or even a family because they were so unsuitable. However they were the most passionate about having a family and having kids. And my mother was even a matchmaker and a invited speaker in my middle school. People thought she was a model parent. LOL

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    1. It happened to me too two days ago that suddenly I couldn’t type the letter i for WP. Very weird. I thought I was going mad for a minute. I didn’t know pyrrhic has such a history, or should I say etymology?

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  3. I think we should adopt the totally logical spelling that Finnish has! In Finnish the short “i” is written “i” and the long “i” is written “ii”. Same with the other vowels. Finnish is very difficult in every other way, but the spelling is 100% logical.

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      1. They have been called “the Japanese of Europe” – partly because their society runs very smoothly I think. The languages are unrelated, yet Japanese words often have a Finnish sound to them – and vice versa. I think it’s because the pattern is vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel-etc in both languages. Japanese words often have amusing meanings in Finnish!

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        1. Since we always have a stereotypical image of Japanese people being quirky and strange (in a good way), I wonder if Finnish people have the same reputation. Or probably British are more quirky and eccentric than everybody else?

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        2. Some Finnish people have that reputation – particularly men in the more rural and conservative areas where they play up to their “backward” image and make a joke of it.

          I’ve been watching a lot of TikTok videos lately about the quirkiness of Japan.

          British people think of themselves as quirky and as having quite a savage sense of humour. TBH I think it’s difficult for us to compare ourselves with people who speak a different language, so we tend to compare ourselves a lot to Americans!

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        3. Yes, I notice that. It is displayed on TV in interviews etc. Americans like to compare with British more than they like to compare with Australian, Canadian or other English speaking countries…

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  4. Pyrrhic “victories” are a common theme in religions I think. Jesus asked “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” But every religion has the equivalent of that.

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      1. This seems like the main plot of history. There is this aim of conquest, costing many lives and money, the empire is formed, there are people trying to destroy it, and in the end it gets destroyed.

        It’s a sad thing really.

        The reason why I was watching that series is because I want to start learning Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It’s a good introduction if you don’t know the plot or story . . . although I imagine you know it much better than me, haha!

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        3. Thank you for the link. I used to like three characters in that historical period, and dreamed of them and compared them and talked about them in many different ways. However recently I began to look at things differently and especially from a woman point of view, which has changed my view on historical figures, for better or worse.

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        4. I would like to hear that one of those days, since it seems that women in that novel were more or less plot devices than anything else. Although, I have a deep appreciation for Diao Chan more than anyone.

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        5. So true. I like Diao Chan too, and I feel that the recorded history is not very kind to Lv Bu. Somehow I suspect that Lv Bu is from a Xian Bei tribe of a nomadic origin which makes him behave different from other men.

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