Definition of "bitter" []

• Having or being a taste that is sharp, acrid, and unpleasant. (adjective)
• Causing a sharply unpleasant, painful, or stinging sensation; harsh: enveloped in bitter cold; a bitter wind. (adjective)
• Difficult or distasteful to accept, admit, or bear: the bitter truth; bitter sorrow. (adjective)
• Proceeding from or exhibiting strong animosity: a bitter struggle; bitter foes. (adjective)
• Resulting from or expressive of severe grief, anguish, or disappointment: cried bitter tears. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Absinthites or Wormwood wine, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use; and this being evidently {242} the _bitter potion of Eysell_ in the poet's sonnet, was certainly the nauseous draught proposed to be taken by Hamlet among the other extravagant feats as tokens of love."
• "But the true Lord of our lives loves us too well to let us experience all the bitter issues of our foolish rebellion against His authority, and yet He loves us too well not to let us taste something of them that we may 'know and see that it is an evil thing _and a bitter_, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God.'"
• "I finish, the word bitter on my tongue before I swallow it."