My friend got a perfect round of mini putt. People got discouraged and they all stopped showing up to our weekly putting challenge. I told him that he makes people retire. We then tried to find the synonym of someone who makes people retire and could not find it. Can anyone help us? So far we use "The Retirer", but we know it's wrong
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Retire is mostly used for people going on pension or an army leaving the battlefield... In this case he is just discouraging them. "The Discourager" works for me...– mplungjanCommented May 9, 2017 at 15:14
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You could call him a "try hard" or a "buzzkill"– HankCommented May 9, 2017 at 15:14
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I think it's more common to call those who gave up trying to beat him a "sore loser". They're no longer enjoying the game because they're too invested in winning. This would imply that being too competitive is undesirable in a social game, particularly if they see winning against your friend impossible now.– Tom Kelly ケリー・トムCommented May 24, 2017 at 4:10
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2 Answers
killjoy ˈkɪldʒɔɪ/ noun
A person who deliberately spoils the enjoyment of others.
"a few killjoys try to reform the seasonal activities"
synonyms: spoilsport, moaner, complainer, mope, prophet of doom, Cassandra, Jeremiah, death's head at a feast.
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Thank you for all the answers. I will call him a killjoy from now on hahaha. Commented May 9, 2017 at 15:41
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There's the informal term Curve-breaker:
A student whose performance upsets the grading curve.
(The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2006)
It is typically used in an academic setting for someone who is so much better than his or her classmates that they can't get as good a grade (when "graded on a curve", see Wikipedia) as they would if the curve-breaker weren't in the class. I think it could be stretched to apply to this situation, however, since your friend is so good at mini-putt that he threw off the "curve" of the rest of your group, discouraging them from playing. Some examples of the phrase's use:
STEVEN: Are you one of those people who gets one hundred percent on an exam when the highest second grade is a seventy percent?
CATHY: That she is.
MARCY: Guilty as charged.
CATHY: See what I mean? I bet she'll be playing in the national ping-pong championship match next year. . . . My name is Cathy, and (pointing to Marcy with her ping-pong paddle) here is the curve-breaker, Marcy.
(Heerak Christian Kim, Ping-Pong, 2001)OK, so maybe there is one curve breaker in the class. (ESPN caption for Tiger Woods photo, in "Page 2 Readers: Sports Cliches that Must Go")
[Colleagues] came up with the nickname "curve-breaker" because they said she was distorting the job-performance curve, Ms. Fitzgerald says. (Shawn Young, Sara Silver and Leila Abboud, "Lukewarm Investors, Nervous Workers Await the New CEO at Lucent-Alcatel", The Wall Street Journal, 08 Sep 2006)
Alternatively, you could coin something new, along the lines of "The Mini-Putt Breaker".
