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

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

“I just never happened to get caught in a serious situation that would embitter me to the point where I would continue in that pattern.”

From New York Times ● Aug. 21, 2010

These things had tended to embitter Walter toward his mother's family, and judging all city people by them, it was hardly natural that he should be very favorably disposed toward little Jessie.

From Jessie Graham by Mary J. Holmes

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

For he himself, then "suffering the social persecution which embitters any departure from accepted creeds," felt in defiant sympathy with all outcasts.

From Mathilde Blind by George Eliot

Today it is a symbol of a people who still seem poisoned and embittered by an attack that happened a quarter of a century ago.

From Salon ● Sep. 11, 2026

By 1776 this had changed, mostly because of the war itself, which embittered and radicalized its participants.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 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

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

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

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

“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