embitter
Americanverb
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to make (a person) resentful or bitter
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to aggravate (an already hostile feeling, difficult situation, etc)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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embittersimple
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embitterssimple
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have embitteredperfect
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has embitteredperfect
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am embitteringprogressive
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are embitteringprogressive
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is embitteringprogressive
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have been embitteringperfect progressive
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has been embitteringperfect progressive
Past
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embitteredsimple
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had embitteredperfect
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was embitteringprogressive
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were embitteringprogressive
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had been embitteringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of embitter
Explanation
To embitter to make someone bitter, resentful, or angry. People are embittered by disappointing and unfair experiences. Life is often difficult, painful, and unfair. When bad things happen, they can embitter people. When you're embittered, your mood and attitude have soured. Losing your job unfairly will embitter you. Getting insulted will embitter you. Facing discrimination will embitter you. Some people are more prone to being embittered than others, but everyone gets embittered sometimes. When something or someone embitters you, you feel resentful and long for revenge.
Vocabulary lists containing embitter
Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: en-, em-
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Novel Study: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Chapters 1–6
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The Devil in the White City
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
As a narrator, Won maintains a weary earnestness, acknowledging the bitterness of his situation without allowing it to embitter him.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 11, 2023
The unhappy decline that constituted the second act was, in Pastor’s view, an uncannily precise preview of the economic, social and political discontents that now embitter our national politics.
From New York Times ● Apr. 23, 2018
Hardship did not embitter Lucy Larcom, and she never lost her love of books and gift for poetry.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
The process can embitter victims if they feel their experiences are being weighed against each other.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 13, 2012
This is one chief source of most of the passions that prey like vultures on the heart, and embitter human life.
From Winterslow Essays and Characters Written There by William Hazlitt
The understanding that zoning rules are made to be broken, meanwhile, embitters residents who double down on strict zoning.
From Slate ● Apr. 12, 2021
While aimed at violent extremists, the crackdown embitters many local streamtowns, and large networks grow paranoid over fears of police infiltration.
From The Verge ● Feb. 28, 2020
In her Nobel lecture, Aung San Suu Kyi remarked: “Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for suffering degrades and embitters and enrages.”
From The Guardian ● Sep. 5, 2017
This highly publicized “war of currents” embitters both Edison and Tesla, who asks his rival late in the drama, “Do you really hate it because it’s dangerous, or because you didn’t invent it?”
From New York Times ● Nov. 6, 2011
Entered at length on the land of his inheritance, discord breaks out in his home and embitters his life.
From Misread Passage of Scriptures by James Baldwin Brown
While he declined to endorse a candidate, Sarwar warned the contenders and their teams against infighting as the race becomes more embittered.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2026
Just make sure you don’t become so aggrieved or embittered that you let it affect your job performance.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 3, 2026
The novel is narrated by Karishma’s embittered son Mohit decades after the events, and his attitude toward most of the family is cynical and contemptuous.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 11, 2026
Brash British playwright Jez Butterworth’s “The Hills of California,” a Chekhovian drama with a modern edge about the vigil variously embittered sisters are holding for their dying mother, who unsuccessfully groomed them for showbiz glory.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2024
This happens when the child who is not missing begins to feel embittered toward the child who is missing purely because he or she is getting all the attention of everyone around.
From "Where Things Come Back" by John Corey Whaley
But for employees at Twitter, a company that has billed itself as the world’s town square, finding out what is happening to their company primarily through Twitter, the service they built, was particularly embittering.
From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2022
That, in turn, often pitted Palestinians against each other, embittering villagers and city dwellers alike against the governing PA.
From Salon ● Sep. 19, 2018
Wilson’s embittering foreign policy failure was the Senate’s rejection of U.S. participation in the embodiment of Wilsonian aspirations, the League of Nations.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 6, 2017
His current policies can be seen as a reaction to those embittering days.
From Slate ● Nov. 7, 2014
“You look like a jailer, Mama,” Alba would say, alarmed at this mania for insuring the future by embittering the present.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
