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

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

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

It is the sequel that embitters the record.

From Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836 Volume I. - Proceedings of the First Expedition, 1826-1830 by Robert Fitzroy

Just make sure you don’t become so aggrieved or embittered that you let it affect your job performance.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 3, 2026

Yet the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877 and the rise of Jim Crow left him embittered, mourning the rollback of hard-won rights.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 24, 2025

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

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

His United Nations service began with an embittering defeat in a vote on whether to seat a delegation from China.

From New York Times ● Dec. 1, 2018

That, in turn, often pitted Palestinians against each other, embittering villagers and city dwellers alike against the governing PA.

From Salon ● Sep. 19, 2018

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