reopen old wounds | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)Tocausethememoryofpasttraumato berecalled, resulting inrenewedsuffering.1994, Edward M. Dew,The trouble in Suriname, 1975-1993, page202:When I had completedThe Difficult Flowering of Surinamin 1976, Fred Ormskirk, the late NPS historian and radio commentator, suggested I delete a number of the more unpleasant stories in the book, claiming that it was better to let go of the past and notreopen old wounds.2007, Vicki Lane,Old Wounds, page93:Please, believe me—the last thing I want to do isreopen old woundsneedlessly, but . . . but if it would finally bring a resolution to the whole mystery—"2015, Domnica Radulescu,Theater of War and Exile, page68:We return to the countries that had once hurt and destroyed us in many irreparable ways and from which we once ran for dear life, in order to get hurt again andhave our old wounds reopened.2023, Muxe Nkondo,Social Memory as a Force for Social and Economic Transformation:Sometimes the treatments involved in healing the nation (such as appointing commissions of inquiry)reopen old wounds, therefore measures should be in place to cleanse those sores or stop them from festering.; Used other than figuratively or idiomatically:seereopen,‎old,‎wound.1998, Samuel Lilienthal,Homoeopathic Therapeutics, page941:Old woundsand ulcersreopenand ulcerate.

Examples:

EN: Who do you think you are to disrupt lives and reopen old wounds?
ES: ¿Quién se cree que es para abrir viejas heridas?
EN: Jings, mate, don't reopen old wounds. Was I doing that, Craig? Was I reopening old wounds?
ES: Pienso, que esto se reduce, a que la gente esta, quizás, celosa de mi éxito.
EN: Jings, mate, don't reopen old wounds.
ES: Jings, tío, no reabras viejas heridas.
EN: Why reopen old wounds?
ES: Porqué reabrir viejas heridas?
EN: Well, it must...reopen old wounds.
ES: Bueno, el... reabrir viejas heridas.
EN: I knew it would reopen old wounds, but...
ES: Sabía que reabriría viejas heridas, pero...
EN: I'm sorry to reopen old wounds, but Louise didn't kill herself.
ES: Siento reabrir viejas heridas, pero Louise no se suicidó.
EN: - If you come back to Dallas, you will just reopen old wounds.
ES: - Si vuelves a Dallas, solo reabrirás viejas heridas.
EN: If you come back to Dallas, you will just reopen old wounds.
ES: Si vuelves a Dallas, solo reabrirás viejas heridas.
EN: No, don't reopen old wounds, it's not a good idea.
ES: -No abras viejas heridas, que no te conviene.
EN: Why do you reopen old wounds?
ES: ¿Qué quiere de nosotros? ¿Por qué insiste en viejas heridas?
EN: Last thing you want to do is reopen old wounds.
ES: La última cosa que quieres hacer es reabrir viejas heridas.
EN: You were afraid to reopen old wounds.
ES: Tenías miedo de reabrir viejas heridas.
EN: The last thing we want to do is reopen old wounds.
ES: Lo último que queremos es reabrir viejas heridas.
EN: I'm sorry, we didn't mean to reopen old wounds.
ES: Lo siento, no queríamos abrir viejas heridas.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).