TAKE THE BITTER WITH THE SWEET Definition & Meaning

Take the bitter with the sweet

Accept life's misfortunes as well as its joys.

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Idioms and Phrases

Accept adversity as well as good fortune, as in Although he got the job, he hadn't counted on having to work with Matthew; he'll just have to take the bitter with the sweet . This idiom uses bitter for “bad” and sweet for “good,” a usage dating from the late 1300s. It was first recorded in John Heywood's 1546 proverb collection. For a synonym, see take the rough with the smooth .

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

"The point of the bankruptcy process is to take the bitter with the sweet," he said.

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“It didn’t come, but it will come, so you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.”

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One must take the bitter with the sweet, of course – and perhaps some would take a world with Citizens United and Janus so long as they can have Roe and Obergefell too.

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“Haven’t our cases rejected” the proposition that one has to “take the bitter with the sweet?”

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He asked Christopher M. Kise, a lawyer for Greene’s Energy, whether his position was that “you’ve got to take the bitter with the sweet.”

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Definitions and idiom definitions from ��t¶�� Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

take the bit in one's mouth take the bread out of someone's mouth

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