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:
“The two of you came happy to celebrate good news,” Navarrete told the quiet couple in Spanish, “and I came to embitter your day.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
The plan, if it passes in its original form, could lead to legal measures that would embitter the everyday lives of the migrants and, critics say, make their stay in Israel intolerable.
From Seattle Times ● May 4, 2023
Mr. Cross “never condoned the kidnappers,” his son-in-law said, but neither did he allow “what they did to embitter him or eat into his enjoyment of life thereafter.”
From Washington Post ● Jan. 21, 2021
Hardship did not embitter Lucy Larcom, and she never lost her love of books and gift for poetry.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018
I was determined that if I could help it your contempt should not embitter all our two lives.
From The Truants by A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason
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
Let me openly admit to you that my loneliness in the world embitters many hours.
From Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) A Tragedy in Four Acts by Samuel A. (Samuel Atkins) Eliot
The sombre, respectful tone from 2024 has become more embittered.
From BBC ● Sep. 11, 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
Keith, it turns out, is an embittered actor who failed to land a role in the musical from which that song came.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026
I think a lot of the problems that come are when the person at home becomes embittered and starts showing that bitterness to the kids.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2025
Germans were embittered by the way so many German speakers were placed under the rule of other countries.
From "The War to End All Wars: World War I" by Russell Freedman
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war against the generals who carried out these policies in part reflects his embittering experiences as a junior officer during this period.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
Clark’s Kimberly is in point of fact epic, a profile in courage, a heroic display of grace under potentially the most embittering circumstances.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 10, 2022
Rather than embittering him, Mr. Adams has said, the trauma helped coax him to become a police officer and change the profession from within.
From New York Times ● Oct. 23, 2021
That, in turn, often pitted Palestinians against each other, embittering villagers and city dwellers alike against the governing PA.
From Salon ● Sep. 19, 2018
Hale soon went bankrupt—an embittering failure that only stoked the furnace of his ambition.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
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.
