adverb
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
bitterly cold (=very cold)
▪ The winter of 1921 was bitterly cold.
bitterly (=with a feeling of great sadness)
▪ I bitterly regretted my decision to leave.
bitterly (=crying hard)
▪ I heard the sound of a woman weeping bitterly.
bitterly/deeply/strongly resent
▪ She bitterly resented his mother’s influence over him.
bitterly/deeply/terribly disappointed
▪ The girl’s parents were bitterly disappointed at the jury’s verdict.
complain bitterly (=in a very angry way)
▪ My grandfather’s always complaining bitterly about how expensive things are.
cry bitterly (=because you feel angry or hurt)
▪ I no longer felt brave or strong, and I began to cry bitterly.
deeply/bitterly/thoroughly ashamed
▪ Alan was deeply ashamed when he remembered what he’d said.
strongly/bitterly/savagely etc attack sb/sth
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
ashamed
▪ All the other literary women he knew were old bags of whom he would be bitterly ashamed.
▪ All the people of Sligo feel bitterly ashamed for what happened.
▪ She was amazed by her own behaviour and between episodes was bitterly ashamed of what was happening to her.
▪ She felt bitterly ashamed of the way she'd fallen into Rohan's arms.
cold
▪ I wasn't annoyed except that it was bitterly cold, freezing.
▪ And Robbo, fresh at Sale from league outfit Wigan, injected his own style on a bitterly cold afternoon.
▪ It was a Friday and bitterly cold.
▪ It was bitterly cold and it was raining.
▪ It was bitterly cold, and Killion wore Dickinson's tunic.
▪ When morning came, bitterly cold and still dark, she had made up her mind.
▪ On the bitterly cold morning of Sunday 13 November 1715 the two armies were woken respectively by bagpipes and trumpets.
▪ The air was bitterly cold and still, with the peculiar lifelessness that pervaded closed-off places.
disappointed
▪ Our younger child was bitterly disappointed when shown the discreet little warning notices.
▪ The local residents were bitterly disappointed with the decision.
▪ Although the victor of a battle at sea, Edward returned home a bitterly disappointed man.
■ VERB
add
▪ If you find it, Corbett added bitterly to himself.
attack
▪ In 1987, when an interim report was issued, scientists and environmentalists bitterly attacked its conclusions as misrepresenting the facts.
complain
▪ The boys gasped, wheezed and giggled; the plumper ones complained bitterly.
▪ He complained bitterly after being surprised by Pat Buchanan in an early primary about a pollster whose predictions had been too optimistic.
▪ Student B immediately slams it shut, complaining bitterly of hay fever.
▪ He complained bitterly of the small attention that was paid to his ideas in his own country.
▪ Lewis-Ann sat under a huge umbrella, fully clothed, complaining bitterly about being too hot.
▪ Norah complained bitterly that her style had brought the company free publicity worth far more than it cost.
▪ And he complains bitterly that exhaustive health tests were not done years ago.
▪ We all complained bitterly when it looked as though Adobe was restricting the development of PostScript and keeping the market to itself.
contest
▪ Lincoln's role in determining the future of the Barnes is bound to be contested bitterly.
▪ Denney created an atmosphere of strict discipline that was resented and bitterly contested by patients for years.
cry
▪ Bathsheba sat and cried bitterly over this letter.
▪ She knelt down by the low window, put her head on her arms and cried bitterly.
▪ I no longer felt strong or calm, and I began to cry bitterly.
disappoint
▪ Henman will be bitterly disappointed but scarcely surprised.
▪ In this he was bitterly disappointed.
▪ Brearley was bitterly disappointed in Firths' reaction to his innovation.
▪ At the time I was bitterly disappointed.
▪ She only knew she was bitterly disappointed that she and Seb would not be living under the same roof.
▪ If so, they must have been bitterly disappointed.
▪ Black was bitterly disappointed after a disastrous batting collapse threatened to ruin the old boys' Schweppes debut.
divide
▪ The issue has bitterly divided the community surrounding the common ever since the complex was first mooted.
▪ Other Republicans say the failure of their first package has left them bitterly divided over what strategy to follow now.
▪ Maybe it was because the season began with players bitterly divided over a new collective bargaining agreement.
fight
▪ We fight bitterly over the remaining pieces of the old world.
oppose
▪ In June 1969 a proposed Connolly commemoration parade through Belfast city centre was bitterly opposed by loyalists.
▪ When we put this strategy into place. it was bitterly opposed by many people.
▪ Its members have been responsible for some of the worst atrocities during the Troubles and bitterly oppose any decommissioning.
▪ Republicans bitterly oppose sampling, saying it invents people for Democratic benefit.
▪ His strategy of seeking an accommodation with Labour was bitterly opposed by many Liberals.
▪ It was difficult working at central office among people who had bitterly opposed our plan.
▪ Consequently it was bitterly opposed by some of the bishops.
regret
▪ It was an agreement that Lear was to regret bitterly in later years.
▪ Many who have left the Association already bitterly regret it.
▪ They had rushed into it too quickly, and lived to bitterly regret their impulsiveness.
regretted
▪ The accused had been sexually abused himself as a child and now bitterly regretted the harm he had caused his daughters.
▪ It was a change Rory regretted bitterly.
▪ Charles bitterly regretted having allowed the cameras in.
▪ Indeed, he regretted bitterly that his attempts to establish a sixth form in the school had been so abortive.
▪ The court heard both men bitterly regretted what happened.
resent
▪ Everything about him assailed her senses in a way she resented bitterly yet seemed unable to do anything about.
▪ The blacks bitterly resented being searched and insisted on their innocence.
▪ But there is evidence that working class women bitterly resented what they regarded as middle class interference.
▪ In government, it is a control function-and managers bitterly resent it.
▪ It hadn't been her imagination, and she bitterly resented the hypocrisy of his charge.
▪ She bitterly resented her husband's domination by his younger brother.
▪ This renewed severity was bitterly resented by the king's subjects.
say
▪ Ordered, they said bitterly, and never collected.
think
▪ Just like all the rest, she thought bitterly.
▪ Still, I thought bitterly, Frank would find truth in what I had written.
▪ Now that I was alone I thought bitterly of the people I lived with.
▪ Instead, I thought bitterly, I sewed on, with my skin whole and I sewed for strangers.
▪ Even if he cared, he probably wouldn't believe her anyway, she thought bitterly.
▪ Easy for them to say, she thought bitterly.
▪ Nathan thought bitterly about how it was only his abnormality that made him suitable for Leila's purposes.
▪ Ray Doyle thought bitterly as the telephone began to ring, jarringly loud, across the room.
weep
▪ Ana had wept bitterly and Mitch had stated quite categorically that he would be back.
▪ According to Leopold, young Thomas wept bitterly when the time came to part.
▪ I was weeping bitterly for most of the time.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ It was a decision that she bitterly regretted later in her life.
▪ Ross complained bitterly that the state didn't care about the homeless.
▪ The law was bitterly opposed by environmentalists.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Even if he cared, he probably wouldn't believe her anyway, she thought bitterly.
▪ He ignored me, jerked up and down and wailed bitterly as he clung to her.
▪ How bitterly I thought that night of the happiness I had left that morning!
▪ It was bitterly cold inside the aluminium hemisphere.
▪ Republicans reacted bitterly to arrogance, real or imagined, by Democrats and their environmentalists.
▪ We all know how bitterly cold it is now outside; it is not very cold here, of course.
▪ When we put this strategy into place. it was bitterly opposed by many people.