pissing contest n.
1. (mainly US) any form of competition in which the participants are motivated more by the need to assert their superiority than by any desire to attain an accurate or positive conclusion.
Roger Maris 85: ‘You don’t,’ Weiss said, ‘get into a spitting contest with a skunk’ That’s the way it got into the papers, anyway, although spitting wasn’t the word he used. | ||
Country Team 247: ‘My advice to you, sir, [...] is the same that Abraham Lincoln gave to one of his cabinet members who was being bombarded by a particularly vitriolic critic: “Don't get into a pissing contest with a skunk!”’. | ||
Investigating the FBI 182: DeFord replied, ‘I don’t want to say a damn thing about it. I don’t want to get in a pissing match with the civil-rights attorneys’. | ||
Digger’s Game (1981) 146: You guys seem to be running a pissing contest here. | ||
Red Omega 86: It would’ve been twenty cables—a pissing contest— ending with the Secretary of State turning chickenshit and informing the British. | ||
Someone Else’s Money 462: Her defeat was fodder for the chauvinists at the Stock Exchange Lunch Club; ‘It just goes to show,’ gloated the specialist in Seaco, ‘if you have to squat to piss, don't get in a pissing match’ . | ||
Labor Research Rev. 20-21 25: Make your struggle a community concern — not a labor-management pissing match. | ||
et al. Everyday Sexism in the Third Millennium 77: Finally, a third woman angrily compared the debate to a ‘pissing contest’. | ||
At Your Cervix 535: A pissing contest wouldn’t further my efforts to secure future employment. | ||
(con. 1973) Johnny Porno 206: ‘I thought you were pushing it pretty hard with him’ [...] ‘That was a pissing contest, kid. Nothing more than that’. | ||
Rough Riders 68: I think it’s just another form of a pissing match. My scars are bigger than yours, like that. | ||
Huffington Post 18 Oct. 🌐 [headline] James Gordon Rips Donald Trump for Turning the Election into a ‘Pissing Contest’. | ||
The Force [ebook] This is a pissing match between two sets of monkeys. | ||
Kill Shot [ebook] If I’d had more cooperation from the Robbers, rather than this ongoing fucking pissing contest. | ||
Joe Country [ebook] ‘Maybe we can get some actual collaboration, instead of indulging in pissing contests’. | ||
🌐 State / Federal pissing contests are among the most consistent and consistently embarrassing features of Australian politics. | on Twitter 1 July||
Back to the Dirt 122: ‘That’s one son of a bitch you don’t wanna get in a pissing match with’. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
Hell to Pay 255: It was nothing. Just, you know, pissin’-contest stuff between men. |