Bitter vs Wretched - What's the difference?
bitter | wretched |
Having an acrid taste (usually from a basic substance).
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*
*:Long after his cigar burnt bitter , he sat with eyes fixed on the blaze. When the flames at last began to flicker and subside, his lids fluttered, then drooped?; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs and ball-gown kneeling on the hearth.
Harsh, piercing or stinging.
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*1999 , (Neil Gaiman), Stardust , p.31 (Perennial paperback edition)
*:It was at the end of February,.
Hateful or hostile.
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*(Bible), (w) iii. 19
*:Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them.
Cynical and resentful.
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(usually in the plural bitters) A liquid or powder, made from bitter herbs, used in mixed drinks or as a tonic.
* 1773 , Oliver Goldsmith,
A type of beer heavily flavored with hops.
(nautical) A turn of a cable about the bitts.
Very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting.
* {{quote-book, year=1918, author=(w)
, title=Creatures That Once Were Men, and other stories, chapter=4
Worthless; paltry; very poor or mean; miserable.
* {{quote-book, year=1864, author=(Fyodor Dostoyevsky), title=Notes from Underground, chapter=1
*, chapter=17
, title= * , Episode 16
* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=April 11, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
, title= (obsolete) Hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked.
As adjectives the difference between bitter and wretched
is that bitter is having an acrid taste (usually from a basic substance) while wretched is very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting.As a noun bitter
is (usually in the plural bitters) a liquid or powder, made from bitter herbs, used in mixed drinks or as a tonic.As a verb bitter
is to make bitter.bitter
English
Adjective
(en-adj)Usage notes
* The one-word comparative form (bitterer) and superlative form (bitterest) exist, but are less common than their two-word counterparts (term) and (term).Derived terms
* bitter pill to swallowSee also
* bitter endAntonyms
* (cynical and resentful) optimisticSynonyms
* (cynical and resentful) jadedNoun
(en noun)- Thus I begin: "All is not gold that glitters,
- "Pleasure seems sweet, but proves a glass of bitters .
Derived terms
* brought up to a bitterwretched
English
(Webster 1913)Adjective
(en-adj)citation, passage=As for me, I felt wretched and helpless, in the darkness, surrounded with angry waves, whose noise deafened me.}}
citation, passage=My room is a wretched , horrid one in the outskirts of the town.}}
The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.}}
- All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag,.
Liverpool 3-0 Man City, passage=Mario Balotelli replaced Tevez but his contribution was so negligible that he suffered the indignity of being substituted himself as time ran out, a development that encapsulated a wretched 90 minutes for City and boss Roberto Mancini. }}
