bitter pill to swallow

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English

Alternative forms

Pronunciation

Noun

bitter pill to swallow (plural bitter pills to swallow)

  1. (figurative) Something unpleasant that must be accepted or endured.
    Synonyms: difficult pill to swallow, hard pill to swallow, tough pill to swallow
    Hypernym: pill to swallow
    • 1886, George Gissing, chapter 10, in Demos: A Story of English Socialism:
      o see himself dethroned, the object of her contempt, was a bitter pill to swallow.
    • 1920 May 1, “Amundsen to Try Again for Pole”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:
      "e cast loose from the ice after a very careful inspection which left us no hope whatsoever of penetrating it. […] It was a bitter pill to swallow, but we decided to search for Winter quarters somewhere along the coast."
    • 2006 June 26, Tony Karon, “Inside Iraq's 'Amnesty' Plan”, in Time‎, archived from the original on 2010-09-03:
      Giving them amnesty would be a bitter pill for the U.S. to swallow.
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bitter pill,‎ swallow.

Usage notes

  • Bitter pill(s) to swallow is not a set phrase. Only a little more than 40% of the usage at COCA with a form of swallow within 9 words before or after is of the form given.
  • Other verbs such as take, down, and digest may replace swallow.
  • About one third of the time bitter pill appears without any such verb nearby.
  • Other adjectives modify pill about 60% of the time: hard, tough, bad, difficult, even easy.

See also

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia