embitter

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

AP: What struck me most watching the film is that despite going through what would defeat or embitter most, you seem to have emerged with such joy and appreciation for life.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 15, 2021

Hardship did not embitter Lucy Larcom, and she never lost her love of books and gift for poetry.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018

Joel L. Fletcher, an owner of Fletcher/Copenhaver Fine Art gallery in Fredericksburg, Va., which specializes in Ms. Aymé’s work, said the tragedies did not embitter her or quash her creativity.

From New York Times ● Dec. 17, 2015

But all the excellence that Jacob ascribes to Reuben serves only to embitter the doom pronounced upon him.

From The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Genesis by Dods, Marcus

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

Self-control embitters a small spirit—it ennobles a large one.

From Frank of Freedom Hill by Derieux, Samuel A. (Samuel Arthur)

Mary doesn’t know her biological father, but she was claimed by a Pomo head man and raised by one of his girlfriends, a loyal if embittered woman named Saturnina.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 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

Set in 1872, Forsaken, focuses on embittered gunslinger John Henry Clayton's return to his hometown and his attempts to build bridges with his estranged father.

From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2024

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

A man might easily be embittered by such circumstances, but Nels made it a point not to struggle unnecessarily with life’s unresolvable dilemmas.

From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson

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

Hale soon went bankrupt—an embittering failure that only stoked the furnace of his ambition.

From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann