sour grapes
 酸葡萄
 Sour a. [Compar. Sourer superl. Sourest.]
 1. Having an acid or sharp, biting taste, like vinegar, and the juices of most unripe fruits; acid; tart.
    All sour things, as vinegar, provoke appetite.   --Bacon.
 2. Changed, as by keeping, so as to be acid, rancid, or musty, turned.
 3. Disagreeable; unpleasant; hence; cross; crabbed; peevish; morose; as, a man of a sour temper; a sour reply. “A sour countenance.”
 He was a scholar . . .
 Lofty and sour to them that loved him not,
 But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.   --Shak.
 4. Afflictive; painful. “Sour adversity.”
 5. Cold and unproductive; as, sour land; a sour marsh.
 Sour dock Bot., sorrel.
 Sour gourd Bot., the gourdlike fruit Adansonia Gregorii, and Adansonia digitata; also, either of the trees bearing this fruit. See Adansonia.
 Sour grapes. See under Grape.
 Sour gum Bot. See Turelo.
 Sour plum Bot., the edible acid fruit of an Australian tree (Owenia venosa); also, the tree itself, which furnished a hard reddish wood used by wheelwrights.
 Syn: -- Acid; sharp; tart; acetous; acetose; harsh; acrimonious; crabbed; currish; peevish.
 Grape n.
 1. Bot. A well-known edible berry growing in pendent clusters or bunches on the grapevine. The berries are smooth-skinned, have a juicy pulp, and are cultivated in great quantities for table use and for making wine and raisins.
 2. Bot. The plant which bears this fruit; the grapevine.
 3. Man. A mangy tumor on the leg of a horse.
 4. Mil. Grapeshot.
 Grape borer. Zool. See Vine borer.
 Grape curculio Zool., a minute black weevil (Craponius inæqualis) which in the larval state eats the interior of grapes.
 Grape flower, or Grape hyacinth Bot., a liliaceous plant (Muscari racemosum) with small blue globular flowers in a dense raceme.
 Grape fungus Bot., a fungus (Oidium Tuckeri) on grapevines; vine mildew.
 Grape hopper Zool., a small yellow and red hemipterous insect, often very injurious to the leaves of the grapevine.
 Grape moth Zool., a small moth (Eudemis botrana), which in the larval state eats the interior of grapes, and often binds them together with silk.
 Grape of a cannon, the cascabel or knob at the breech.
 Grape sugar. See Glucose.
 Grape worm Zool., the larva of the grape moth.
 Sour grapes, things which persons affect to despise because they can not possess them; -- in allusion to Æsop's fable of the fox and the grapes.
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 sour grapes
      n : disparagement of something that is unattainable