|
Reader question Please explain the term “sore loser”. What kind of man is he? My comments: The sore loser is a man (or woman, if you will) who doesn’t take defeat well. He wins a game and that’s alright. No problem. He’s happy and cheerful. He wins all the time and that’s fine, too. He loses one and oh, oh, big problem. He is upset. He grumbles, complains, looks for excuses, gets angry (kicking at the door, throwing a table, etc.). Or he can’t go to sleep at night, and so on and so forth. He just can’t keep it together when he loses. In other words, he loses his composure, or in colloquialism, his cool. In short, he becomes and stays “sore”. Painful, that is. The sore loser, still in other words, is a “bad loser”, a man (or woman, if you insist) who can’t deal with losing properly – taking it badly. Put in another way, the bad loser is not a, well, good loser. The good loser is one to remains gracious in defeat. The good loser, say, congratulates the winner for doing a good job instead of indulging himself in self pity or whining about his “bad luck” or badmouthing judges etc. Tony Parker, for example, is a good loser. Parker is a French basketball player playing for the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA. He had this to say after his team was swept 4-0 (beaten four straight times, that is, in a best-of-seven series) by archrivals Phoenix Suns, led by Canadian Steve Nash (AP, May 10, 2010): | 
