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

Mr. Cross “never condoned the kidnappers,” his son-in-law said, but neither did he allow “what they did to embitter him or eat into his enjoyment of life thereafter.”

From Washington Post ● Jan. 21, 2021

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

From Textbooks ● Jan. 18, 2018

The sorrows that embitter are encountered usually farther along the road: they are not the skies of spring and summer which are overcast.

From The Shadow of the Past by F.E. Mills Young

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

But what often embitters for me this happy court-life is the universal want of dissimulation.

From Hesperus or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days Vol. I. A Biography by Jean Paul

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

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

Rapp plays the part of a lover embittered by the lingering presence of a third party in her relationship.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2025

He cried for himself and for his family—for his parents, who had lived their whole lives in a kind of dreamless and embittered sleep, haunted by phantasms and suckered by the empty promises of pitchmen.

From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson

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

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

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

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

From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann