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more sinned against than sinning

  1. An expression used of those who, though they may be guilty of wrongdoing, think themselves the victim of a more serious wrong. From William Shakespeare 's King Lear.


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Idioms and Phrases

Less guilty than those who have injured one, as in It's true she took the money but they did owe her quite a bit—in a way she's more sinned against than sinning . This expression comes from Shakespeare's King Lear (3:2), where the King, on the heath during a storm, so describes his plight.
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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

More sinned against than sinning, this Billy is largely a victim of circumstances, backed into a corner by life until his only option is to come out shooting.

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Even if your daughters are, in some sense, more sinned against than sinning, you could reasonably worry that putting resources in their hands will allow them to support destructive causes.

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He insists he is a man more sinned against than sinning and is working with lawyers to clear his name.

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While the British tabloids like to cast Meghan in the villainous role of the Duchess of Windsor — the American divorcée who lured away their king in 1936 and lived with him in bitter exile, causing an irreparable family rift — Harry and Meghan seem determined to position her instead as a latter-day Diana, a woman mistreated by her in-laws, more sinned against than sinning.

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As a result, when Lear describes himself as “a man more sinned against than sinning,” these words represent not the dawning of tragic awareness in a complicated protagonist but more self-pity from a cranky old narcissist.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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