Meaning
Something painful, disappointing, or humiliating that must be accepted even though it is very hard to accept. Applied to unwelcome news, defeats, verdicts, and losses; 'hard' is a common substitute for the first adjective. Standard to slightly literary; frames an acceptance as reluctant and painful. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The image is medical and literal at root: pills were genuinely bitter, and getting one down took effort, so an unwelcome necessity became a pill that had to be swallowed. Etymonline dates the literal noun to about 1400, from Latin pilula, 'little ball', and records the figurative sense - pill as something disagreeable that must be accepted, that is 'swallowed' - by the 1540s. Christine Ammer's American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, as reproduced by The Free Dictionary, dates the full expression to the late 1500s and defines it as an unpleasant or humiliating fact that is difficult to endure. Datings thus vary by reference across the sixteenth century; the fuller wording with 'to swallow' appears to have become the fixed modern form after the shorter 'a bitter pill', though precisely when it settled is not documented in the sources consulted.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a bitter pill
- a hard pill to swallow
- a tough pill to swallow
- quite a pill to swallow
Usage Examples
- Losing the bakery after sixty years was a bitter pill to swallow for the whole family.
- The tribunal's finding was a bitter pill for the ministry to swallow, but it published the report in full.
- For a designer who prides himself on simplicity, admitting the clutter had been his own idea was a bitter pill to swallow.