Learn English – Victory in the face of defeat – – what does this phrase mean

grammarphrases

I have seen this phrase being used multiple times, mostly in the written context. But I am unsure what exactly it means to have

Victory in the face of defeat

I am confused between these 2 interpretations

  1. To gain victory even when defeat was close?
  2. To be victorious in some broader sense, in spite of the defeat?

Thanks.

Best Answer

in the face of

just means in the presence of or confronted with and so both of your senses could work and therefore probably are sometimes used. Google seems to think that Christian pastors are the most conspicuous users of the infelicitous phrase and that they use it to mean your second sense, very particularly that religion gives you a true victory in the face of the seeming defeat of death.

Really, the better expression for your first sense is

snatching victory from the jaws of defeat

which implies the very visceral closeness of disaster. Having said that, almost no one says that. What people actually use is its humorously ironic inverse,

snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

which naturally implies that one done f'ed up and scored an own-goal.

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