embitter

“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

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

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

From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018

Greatness as a Mask.—By greatness in our comportment we embitter our foes; by envy that we do not conceal we almost reconcile them to us.

From Human, All-Too-Human, Part II by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

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 Samuel A. (Samuel Arthur) Derieux

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

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

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

At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we recognized that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill.

From "All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel" by Erich Maria Remarque

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

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

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

“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