Meaning of ‘A Bitter Pill to Swallow’
Meaning
An experience that’s difficult or painful to accept.
Example
Losing the entire valley to the forest fire was a bitter pill to swallow.
before doctors had any way to make pills more palatable. The bark of the cinchona tree was used to fight malaria, but the quinine in it was extremely bitter. Widely employed in the era before coated medication, cinchona pellets caused any disagreeable thing to be termed a bitter pill to swallow.
