bitter pill to swallow

English

Alternative forms

• bitter pill

Pronunciation

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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

   • 1886, George Gissing, chapter 10, in Demos: A Story of English Socialism:

     [T]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^[1], →ISSN:

     "[W]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^[2], 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.

Related terms

• swallow a bitter pill

See also

• sugarcoat the pill