Word.ws English Dictionary

taking the bitter with the sweet

taking the bitter with the sweet is the present participle and gerund of take the bitter with the sweet.

Meaning of take the bitter with the sweet

Verb

take the bitter with the sweet (third-person singular simple present takes the bitter with the sweet, present participle taking the bitter with the sweet, simple past took the bitter with the sweet, past participle taken the bitter with the sweet)

  1. (idiomatic) To accept positive things with negative things.
    • Today we had the bitter with the sweet: they approved the loan but only gave us a year to pay it back in.

Questions about taking the bitter with the sweet

What is taking the bitter with the sweet the present participle and gerund of?
Taking the bitter with the sweet is the present participle and gerund of take the bitter with the sweet.

Words near taking the bitter with the sweet in the dictionary

  1. taking ten
  2. taking the bait
  3. taking the ball and running with it
  4. taking the bench
  5. taking the biscuit
  6. taking the bitter with the sweet
  7. taking the bread out of someone's mouth
  8. taking the Browns to the Super Bowl
  9. taking the bull by the horns
  10. taking the cake
  11. taking the chair

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: taking the bitter with the sweet (page history and authors); take the bitter with the sweet (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “taking the bitter with the sweet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/taking_the_bitter_with_the_sweet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.