bitter

UK/ˈbɪt.ə/US/ˈbɪ.tɚ/

adjectiveB14 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,279 of 15,258neutral

Bitter is the sharp, dry taste that pulls your face in. Black coffee with nothing in it, the white skin inside an orange peel, very dark chocolate, tonic water.

It reaches a long way past the tongue. A bitter wind is one that hurts to stand in, and bitter cold is the coldest kind there is. A bitter argument is fought hard and leaves marks; a bitter person is still hurt by something that happened years ago, which is the part learners get wrong — you are not bitter about the traffic this morning, you are bitter about the job you did not get in 2018. The adverb does most of the work in writing: bitterly cold, bitterly disappointed. And in a British pub, a bitter is a pint of brown beer.

Definitions of bitter

1adjectivebitterSharp and harsh on the tongue, with no sweetness in it.B1~44%
“The medicine was so bitter she could hardly swallow it.”
- Said"Too bitter for me. Is there any honey going?"
- WrittenThe espresso was bitter and black and exactly what the morning needed.
- UsedAdd a pinch of salt to bitter greens to soften them.
- ContrastBitter, not sour. Sour is lemon and makes you pucker; bitter is coffee and sits at the back of the tongue. sour →
- Not thisStrong is not bitter. A strong tea has more flavour; a bitter one has been brewed too long.
- SimplyThis drink is bitter. I want sugar.
Patternbitter + noun (taste, coffee, chocolate) · a bitter aftertaste · slightly / very bitter · bitterness
synonyms: sharp, harsh
2adjectiveresentfulStill hurt and angry about something that happened long ago.B1~20%
“He grew bitter after the case went against him.”
synonyms: resentful
3adjectivefreezingOf wind or weather: cold enough to hurt.B2~2%
“A bitter wind came straight off the sea.”
synonyms: freezing, biting
4adjectiveargumentOf an argument or a rivalry: fought hard and with real anger on both sides.B2~34%
“The two families were locked in a bitter dispute over the land.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 138 sentences found in the wild and placed 75 of them on a sense (63 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Remember it

BITT-er → a BEER

You lift a glass of warm beer and drink half of it down in one go, expecting something sweet. Your tongue goes tight at the back, your eyes shut, and the glass lands on the table again.

hooks ontobeer

Phrases it lives in

a bitter pill to swallow — a fact you hate but have to accept
to the bitter end — right to the finish, however bad it gets

Also practised as

adjectiveStill hurt and angry about something that happened long ago.

Where it comes from

Bitter is bite with an -er on the end: Old English biter, the biting one, from Proto-Germanic *bitraz. A bitter taste is the taste that bites the tongue back, and the same bite is still in there when the wind is bitter or an argument turns bitter.

Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeyd-
Middle English
bittre
English, today
bitter

Built from

biter · Old English — bitter

From Middle English bittre. From Middle English bitter, bittre, from Old English bitter, biter (“bitter”), from Proto-West Germanic bitr, from Proto-Germanic bitraz (“bitter”), equivalent to bite + -er used attributively. Cognate with stq, West Frisian, Low German, Danish, Dutch, German, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish bitter, Icelandic bitur (all meaning “bitter”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen, A Man Called Ove, Weather & Seasons, Texture & Touch

First appears in chapter 5 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

bitter in the wild

The bitter orange is used to make essential oil, used in foods, drinks, and pharmaceuticals.
Bitter orange
Maror are the bitter herbs eaten at the Passover Seder in keeping with the biblical commandment "with bitter herbs they shall eat it.".
Maror
Ginataang ampalaya, is a Filipino vegetable stew made from bitter melon and tinapa (smoked fish) in coconut milk, bagoong alamang (shrimp paste), and spices.
Ginataang ampalaya
Thus, he wrote, those with such interests "must take the bitter with the sweet".
Arnett v. Kennedy
However, he later became a bitter opponent of the same policy that was promoted by King Alexander I.
Svetozar Pribićević

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

Definitions of bitter

1adjectivebitterSharp and harsh on the tongue, with no sweetness in it.B1~44%

“The medicine was so bitter she could hardly swallow it.”

Said"Too bitter for me. Is there any honey going?"
WrittenThe espresso was bitter and black and exactly what the morning needed.
UsedAdd a pinch of salt to bitter greens to soften them.
ContrastBitter, not sour. Sour is lemon and makes you pucker; bitter is coffee and sits at the back of the tongue. sour →
Not thisStrong is not bitter. A strong tea has more flavour; a bitter one has been brewed too long.
SimplyThis drink is bitter. I want sugar.

Patternbitter + noun (taste, coffee, chocolate) · a bitter aftertaste · slightly / very bitter · bitterness

synonyms: sharp, harsh

2adjectiveresentfulStill hurt and angry about something that happened long ago.B1~20%

“He grew bitter after the case went against him.”

synonyms: resentful

3adjectivefreezingOf wind or weather: cold enough to hurt.B2~2%

“A bitter wind came straight off the sea.”

synonyms: freezing, biting

4adjectiveargumentOf an argument or a rivalry: fought hard and with real anger on both sides.B2~34%

“The two families were locked in a bitter dispute over the land.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 138 sentences found in the wild and placed 75 of them on a sense (63 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.