Word.ws English Dictionary

bitters

bitters is the plural of bitter.

bitters is the third-person singular simple present indicative of bitter.

Meaning of bitter

Noun (1)

bitter (countable and uncountable, plural bitters)

  1. (usually in the plural bitters) A liquid or powder, made from bitter herbs, used in mixed drinks or as a tonic.
    • Thus I begin: "All is not gold that glitters,
      "Pleasure seems sweet, but proves a glass of bitters.1773, Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
  2. A type of beer heavily flavored with hops.
  3. A turn of a cable about the bitts.

Noun (2)

bitter (plural bitters)

  1. (in-compounds, informal) A hardware system whose architecture is based around units of the specified number of bits (binary digits).
    • However, 16-bitters are far more expensive than the 8-bit variety. And, unfortunately, have only a handful of business applications software packages that really take advantage of them.1983, Computerworld, volume 17, number 49, page 21

See all 11 meanings of bitter

Noun

bitters (plural bitters)

  1. A liquid used in mixed drinks or as a tonic into which bitter herbs have been steeped (it can also be found in powdered form for adding to mixed drinks).
    • tonic water dashed with bitters
    • His desire for liquidation was expressed so heartily that I went with him to a café down the street where we had some vile vermouth and bitters.1909 April, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Phoebe”, in Roads of Destiny, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, →OCLC, page 106

Forms of bitters

pluralbitters

Words formed from bitters

Phrases with bitters

Questions about bitters

What does bitters mean?
Bitters means a liquid used in mixed drinks or as a tonic into which bitter herbs have been steeped (it can also be found in powdered form for adding to mixed drinks).
What is bitters the plural of?
Bitters is the plural of bitter.
What part of speech is bitters?
Bitters is a noun.
What is the plural of bitters?
The plural of bitters is bitters.

Words near bitters in the dictionary

  1. bitternuts
  2. bitterroot
  3. Bitterroot Mountains
  4. Bitterroot Range
  5. bitterroots
  6. bitters
  7. bittersharp
  8. bittersome
  9. bittersweet
  10. bittersweetly
  11. bittersweetness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bitters (page history and authors); bitter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-bitters.wav.

Cite this entry: “bitters.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bitters. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.