add insult to injury
Formsadds insult to injury, adding insult to injury, added insult to injury
- 1To worsen an already unfavorable situation by adding mockery, indignity, or further harm to an existing loss.
Like rubbing salt into a wound that already hurts.
The airline lost his luggage and then, to add insult to injury, refused to offer any compensation.
Being passed over for the promotion stung, and her manager added insult to injury by praising the rival in front of the whole team.
Note
A fable sits behind the phrase. In Phaedrus, writing in the first century CE, a bald man swats at a fly on his head, strikes himself instead, and the fly mocks him for wanting to kill it over a mere touch. In use it most often stands as a set-off infinitive, to add insult to injury, introducing the second blow after the first. Heap insult on injury says the same thing.
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Origin
The phrase derives from the fables of Phaedrus in the first century CE, in which a bald man swats at a fly on his head but strikes himself, prompting the fly to ask what he would do to himself, having 'added insult to injury' (Latin: quid facies tibi, Iniuriae qui addideris contumeliam?). The actual English wording appears from the middle of the 18th century.