bitterness

nounattested in dialogue

United Kingdom//ˈbɪtənəs//

The quality of having a bitter taste.

noun

1
The quality of having a bitter taste.
2
The quality of feeling bitter; acrimony, resentment; the quality of exhibiting such feelings.
the bitterness of his words
She kept her bitterness about her mistreatment for the rest of her life.
She suspected that during the summer her father had mentioned Brian’s windfall to Billy and that father and son had then traded snidenesses and bitternesses about the W—— Corporation and bourgeois Robin and leisure-class Brian.
Speaking of the guest list, though, it is most disappointing to find some of the third tier European princelings unable to hide their bitterness at being NFI.
3
The quality of eliciting a bitter, humiliating or harsh feeling.
Nothing could assuage the bitterness of their defeat.
4
Harsh cold.
The bitterness of the winter caught us all by surprise.

Etymology

From Middle English bitternesse, biternesse, from Old English biternes (“bitterness; grief”), equivalent to bitter + -ness.

Forms

plural: bitternesses

bitten · That has received a bite.bitter · Having an acrid taste (usually from a basic substance).Bitter · A surname from Dutch or German.

bitterness · The quality of having a bitter taste.

biz · Business, especially showbusiness.bizarre · Strangely unconventional; highly unusual and different from…BJ · Billy Jean, Bobby Joe or another name with those initials,…

The neighbouring pages — Alphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.