Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bitters   /bˈɪtərz/   Listen
Bitters

noun
1.
Alcoholic liquor flavored with bitter herbs and roots.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Bitters" Quotes from Famous Books



... how are you?" cried Rankin; "haven't seen you for a long time. I think another 'smile' wouldn't hurt us, eh? What do you say? I'm doing bitters. Nothing like Angostura—with a little drop of gin in it; gives tone ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... nothin' else. But I ain't never had nothin' in my head like that. A feller's got to have sumpin' besides school-larnin' to draw like him. Now you're a sketch-artist, and know. Why, he drawed de Sheriff last Sunday sittin' in de porch huggin' his bitters, to de life. Say, Bowse, show de gentleman de picter ye ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... you join of course; ye niver says no,—eh, Duse?" They stepped to the counter, and Dunn, again, pointing his finger upon his nose at the Dutchman, who stood with his hands spread upon the counter, called for gin and bitters, Stoughton light. Turning to Manuel, who was sitting upon a bench with his head reclined upon his hand, apparently in deep meditation, he took him by the collar in a rude manner, and dragging him to the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... rum,—remembering the long watches of the parson. This may shock us now; and yet it is to be feared that in our day the sin of hypocrisy is to be added to the sin of indulgence: the old people nestled under no cover of liver specifics or bitters. Reform has made a grand march indeed; but the Devil, with his square bottles and Scheidam schnapps, has kept a pretty even pace ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... turned from Master Silas toward William, and said, "Brave Willy, thou hast given us our bitters; we are ready now for any thing ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... "hail-fellows-well-met" with the Englishmen, and we had agreed among us to take care of each other, should either side happen to be taken. I had been on board the Royal George but a short time, when two of these very men came up to me with some grog and some grub; and next morning they brought me my bitters. I saw no more of them, however, except when they came to shake hands with us at the gang-way, as ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... in a Christian way was the thing that saved him; poor critter, his stomach gnawed, and he needed just them bitters I made for him, and Louis' kind treatment and planning to help him be born agin, and its done good and strong, jest as I ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell

... falter, it shall cheer me on my way; Ay, sustain and give me comfort,—make my feeble spirit gay. All we need to have, my brothers, in our war of peace 'gainst strife, Is the cadence of sweet music sprinkled in to sweeten life; It will sweeten all our bitters, which now seem so very long, If we have it soft and gentle, ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones

... he suspected when Anna, upon the day following his return from Paris, asked that they might have a little talk together and named the half-hour immediately before dinner for that purpose. He received her in his study, whither Fellows had already carried him a glass of sherry and bitters, and being in the best of good humor, he frankly confessed his pleasure that she should so appeal ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... a drink er dem bitters out'n dat green bottle on de she'f yander. I's gwine fas', en it'll gimme strenk fer ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... have some share too in ideas of greatness; but it is a small one, weak in its nature, and confined in its operations. I shall only observe that no smells or tastes can produce a grand sensation, except excessive bitters, and intolerable stenches. It is true that these affections of the smell and taste, when they are in their full force, and lean directly upon the sensory, are simply painful, and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when they are moderated, as in a description ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... him describe how damsons could best be preserved, you could make sure that there was a firm and healthy digestion; he was not one of the wretched creatures who prolong their depressed existence by means of Angostura bitters, and only wake up to an occasional flicker of life at the ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black

... fruit juice prepared with a dash of bitters. It is quite nice. And I'll ask you, James, not to explode before the servants. I ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... long fair moustache that walks about at the rate of seven miles an hour, with his frock-coat all unbuttoned. Harding the novelist—the fellow I was sitting with the other night, said such a good thing—he said he was a sort of apotheosis of sherry and bitters. I don't know why it is good, but it is; whether it is the colour ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... unprofitable lore on the subject, since expanded by further queryings. The potations in-demand divide themselves, it appears, into two main classes: aperitifs and digestifs. The former are simply appetizers, usually of the bitters class, and are taken before meals. The latter, as their name shows, come after the repast, for some supposed effect in aiding digestion. These liquors are often, exceedingly strong, but it is to be remembered that the quantities taken are minute; when brought not mixed ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... cautioned me at one time to keep away from a certain horse, for "white horses always kick." An old Pennsylvania farmer laid down the law that shingles laid during the increase of the moon always curl up. He had tried it once and found out. A friend will advise you to take Blank's Bitters: "I took a bottle one spring and felt much better; they always cure." Physicians base their knowledge of medicines upon the observations of thousands of trained observers through many years, and not upon a single experience. Most people are prone to judge ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... a book by an Italian named Franchi, formerly a priest, on the present condition of philosophy in Italy. He emerges from its depths—or shallows—to send his best remembrances; and to Bice he begs especially to recommend Plantation Bitters. ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... yeast-powder tins, and empty bottles that had been apparently stranded by the "first low wash" of pioneer waves. On the ragged trunk of an enormous pine hung a few tufts of gray hair caught from a passing grizzly, but in strange juxtaposition at its foot lay an empty bottle of incomparable bitters,—the chef-d'oeuvre of a hygienic civilization, and blazoned with the arms of an all-healing republic. The head of a rattlesnake peered from a case that had contained tobacco, which was still brightly placarded with the high-colored ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... won't catch the measles, for they are not nice, especially when they strike in, but you would look all right, even if you did have red spots on your face. I would like to try the Mexican Tea, because you want me to, but mother says no, she doesn't believe in it, and Burtons Bitters are a great deal healthier. If I was you I would get the velvet hood all right. The heathen live in warm countries so ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various

... Doctrine as to Grammar Schools Democracy The Eucharist St. John, xix. 11. Divinity of Christ Genuineness of Books of Moses Mosaic Prophecies Talent and Genius Motives and Impulses Constitutional and functional Life Hysteria Hydro-carbonic Gas Bitters and Tonics Specific Medicines Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians Oaths Flogging Eloquence of Abuse The Americans Book of Job Translation of the Psalms Ancient Mariner Undine Martin Pilgrim's Progress Prayer Church-singing Hooker Dreams Jeremy Taylor English Reformation Catholicity Gnosis Tertullian ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... hasty—be not hasty, I beg," said Amasa Farrington. "I know I may surprise you. I, too, was unknown at one time, and never expected to be anything more than a traveling Indian Bitters pedler. My latent talent was developed and fostered by a kindly soul, and I come to you now, Miss Fielding, in the remembrance of my own youth ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson

... to Mrs. Mac-Candlish, as he accepted her offer of a glass of bitters at the bar, 'the deil's no sae ill as he's ca'd. It's pleasant to see a gentleman pay the regard to the business o' the county that Mr. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... no' do; nor Burdock and Blood Bitters; nor Powder and Shot," said the Squire, ruminating; "for the one ca's up the tither ower nayteral like. What ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... pull at them bitters, aunty," said Jeff feebly, with his wandering eye still recurring to his page. "They'll do ye a power of good in the way ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte

... supply of wholesome, easily digestible feed will be all the additional treatment required. In this connection demulcent feed (boiled flaxseed, wheat bran) is especially good. If much blood has been lost, bitters (gentian, one-half ounce) and iron (sulphate of iron, 2 drams) should be ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... with a disease which my doctor said was eczema. He failed to do me any good, and I fell away to 90 pounds. I had dyspepsia so bad that I could not eat anything. My husband got me "sarsaparillas" and "cures" and "bitters," and nothing did me any good. Finally he got two bottles of Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery. I began using it, and, thank God and you, I improved; now I weigh 140 pounds, and my skin is as smooth as a baby's. My husband says I look younger than I did the first time he saw me. I have better ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted; thence proceed mawkishness and a thousand bitters." ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... patent medicines contain some alcohol, and in many, the quantity of alcohol is far in excess of that found in the strongest wines. Tonics and bitters advertised as a cure for spring fever and a worn-out system are scarcely more than cheap cocktails, as one writer has derisively called them, and the amount of alcohol in some widely advertised patent remedies is alarmingly large and almost equal to ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... years old, the dryest kind of a wit, and extremely fond of his bitters. He lived about forty miles out from Montgomery, on the Coosa river, but about a week prior to the time I saw him, had come to Montgomery to see his friends. Simon's morality was not of the highest order, and the first place he visited was Patterson's saloon. Here he met a few congenial spirits, ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... steak pudding Beef, to stew Beef, (a round of,) to stew Beef, (a round of,) to stew another way Beef and tongues, to pickle Beef tea Beets, to boil Beets, to stew Beer, (molasses) Beer, (sassafras) Biscuit, (milk) Biscuit, (soda) Biscuit, (sugar) Biscuit, (tea) Bishop Bitters Black cake Black-fish, to stew Blanc-mange Blanc-mange, (arrow-root) Blanc-mange, (carrageen) Bottled small beer Bran bread Bread Bread, (rye and Indian) Bread cake Bread jelly Bread pudding, baked Bread pudding, boiled Bread and butter pudding Bread sauce Brocoli, to boil Brown soup, rich Buckwheat ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... probably no harm in Dolly, though it is man's proud right to question it in exchange for his bitters. She was tall and willowy, and stretched her neck like a swan, and returned you your change with disdainful languor; to call such a haughty beauty Dolly was one of the minor triumphs for man, and Dolly they all called her, except the only one who could have given ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... of Lime-Water and Milk, drank to the Quantity of a Quart a Day, was of Use to some; and the infusum amarum, and other gentle Bitters, taken to the Quantity of an Ounce or two, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... Mr. H. is getting on pretty smoothly, though he has occasionally to take a dose of what Mr. York calls "Plantation Bitters," in the shape of complaints, faithlessness, and general rascality on the part ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... was not his custom to refuse any offer of the sort! He sat down at their table and ordered a sherry and bitters. Mr. Waddington seemed to have expanded. He did not mention the subject of architecture. More than once Mr. Bunsome glanced with some surprise at Burton. The young man completely puzzled him. They talked about Menatogen and its possibilities, ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.' I don't know who made this statement, or why it was made, but it's dollars to doughnuts that the fellow who did was saved from an untimely grave by the curative powers of Bunker Hill Stomach Bitters and rose from obscurity to high ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman

... He don't look or talk like he have got any sense, girl, but he are the greatest doctor anywhere from Harpeth Hills to Californy or Alasky. He have got good remedies for all. I reckon you are one of the hot water kind, but he can give bitters too. You'd better keep him to ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... night with sherry and bitters, drank champagne steadily up to dessert, then raw, rasping Capri with all the strength of whisky, took Benedictine with his coffee, four or five whiskies and sodas to improve his pool strokes, beer and bones at half-past ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... Deacon to Mrs. Mac-Candlish, as he accepted her offer of a glass of bitters at the bar, "the deil's no sae ill as he's ca'd. It's pleasant to see a gentleman pay the regard to the business o' the county that ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... dimpled the water; and brown pelicans fell upon them, dashing up fountains of silver. The trade-breeze, as it rose, brought off the swamps a sickly smell, suggestive of the need of coffee, quinine, Angostura bitters, or some other febrifuge. In spite of the glorious sunshine, the whole scene was sad, desolate, almost depressing, from its monotony, vastness, silence; and we were glad, when we neared the high tree which marks the entrance of the Chaguanas Creek, and turned at last into a recess in the mangrove ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... puzzled the doctors, and seemed clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might need the supplement of quackery. Lady Chettam, who attributed her own remarkable health to home-made bitters united with constant medical attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew's account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her case ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... Americans never do things by halves; their vices and their virtues are alike in extremes, and the principles of the second book of the Ethics of Aristotle[5] are altogether unknown to their philosophy. At one moment they are all for "brandy and bitters," at the next, tea and turn-out is the order of the day, Here, you must "liquor or fight"—there, a little wine for the stomach's sake is sternly denied to a fit of colic, or an emergency of gripes. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... town by half past six, went round to the Cri. to have a sherry-and-bitters, dined at the Royal, went on to the Pav., and on with all the girls in hansoms, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... worth losing or keeping? The bitters or sweets men quaff? The sowing or the doubtful reaping? The harvest of grain or chaff? Or squandering days or heaping, Or waking seasons or sleeping, The laughter that dries the weeping, Or the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... Hope, whose sirens whisper that the world's sweets are sweet and its crowns worth winning. Let me for a space be free from this dastard age creeping through the veins, dulling the perspective of life and leadening the brain, whose carping companions draw attention to the bitters in the cups of Youth's Delights, and mutter that the golden crowns we struggle for shall tarnish as soon as they are placed on our tired brows!" Suddenly my bitter reverie was broken by the knight and the lady calling ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... state whether Seymour is a Prohibition town. Of course if it is and love is listed as an intoxicant, the blind god will be expatriated for the benefit of the makers of Peruna, Hostetter's Bitters and and other palate ticklers, popular only at blind tigers. Why the deuce didn't the Seymourites set to work and settle this vexatious problem for themselves? Must I undertake a system of scientific experiments ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... first time could merge her resentment on behalf of Rex in her sympathy with Gwendolen; and Mrs. Gascoigne was disposed to hope that trouble would have a salutary effect on her niece, without thinking it her duty to add any bitters by way of increasing the salutariness. They had both been busy devising how to get blinds and curtains for the cottage out of the household stores; but with delicate feeling they left these matters in the back-ground, and talked at first of Gwendolen's journey, and the comfort it was to her ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... the panacea of Paracelsus is rivalled, and every calamity that can afflict the body, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is at once relieved. "Vegetable Powders," "Botanical Syrup," "Bilious Pills," "Jaundice Bitters," "Eye Waters," ointments, &c. &c. are proclaimed as veritable specifics by these veritable physic-mongers: no disease is too subtle, no train of symptoms too severe, for them to contend with; they only meet the foe to conquer, and confer an immortality on suffering humanity and themselves. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... sir, With paint and brush to blazon on these rocks The merits of my master's nostrum—so: (Paints rapidly.) "McDonald's Vinegar Bitters!" ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... shall go; While smoking streams from silver spouts shall glide, Or China's earth receive the sable tide, While coffee shall to British nymphs be dear, While fragrant steams the bended head shall cheer, Or grateful bitters shall delight the taste, So long her honors, name and praise ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... the little girls entered was an unfinished one, and from the rafters hung paper bags of dried herbs; for, besides being a housekeeper and clerk, Mrs. Rosenberg was something of a doctress withal, and made "bitters" for ...
— Dotty Dimple at Play • Sophie May

... they act as tonics and general invigorants of the entire system. Masquerading under one guise or another they are sold to the unsuspecting public—prohibitionists for the most part—who fondly imagine that their glass of "bitters," "liver-regulator," or "safe cure for the kidneys," is entirely harmless. Let all such be warned that with scarcely an exception patent medicines of this class are nothing more nor less than poor whisky containing some bitter to disguise the taste, and that they are in fact taking a drink ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris

... God and rewarded by those "secret satisfactions" which come to the man who loves his work and is conscious of having given it his best, he must have had hours, days, when he drank deep of the cup of bitterness. There are, though, bitters that shrivel and bitters that tone and invigorate. Or perhaps they are the same and ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin

... sweets and the bitters of love; In friendship I early was taught to believe; My passion the matrons of prudence reprove; I have found that a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... his guest, while Pinnock called after him—"Mind your eye, Bo'sun. Be civil to him. See that he doesn't kill a waiter or two on the way up. Not but what he'd be welcome to do it, for all the good they are here," he added, gloomily, taking another sip of his sherry and bitters; and before he had finished it the Bo'sun and his ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... amari aliquid, and his condescending patronage was dolefully alloyed with the inevitable dash of bitters which, as Poet SHAKSPEARE remarks, withers the galled jade until it winces. For with an iron heel has Hon'ble Mr P. declined sundry essays of enormous length and importance, composed in Addisonian, Johnsonian, and Gibbonian phraseology on assorted topics, such as ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... under the suspicion of bootlegging and how the town had seethed with the downfall of an elder of the church—and all because the old man had imported two cases, each of a dozen bottles of the Siwash Indian Stomach Bitters recommended to cure his dyspepsia. There had been a moment, said Banks, when the town expected to see Newton shut up in the calaboose under the post office—until the true contents of ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... colouring matter, it is open to wine dealers to pass off any liquid as the most popular of wines or spirits. Case after case came before the court, of beer made of alcohol and powder; wine of colouring matter, alcohol and paste; brandy of "essences"; and bitters of "Chinese elixirs." The falsifying appliances came from Europe, but the bogus labels, which described those poisons as "specially adapted for invalids and bottled in Glasgow, Scotland," or even offered 25,000 francs to any who could prove that so-called Greek "Koniak" was ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... They set the blood glowing, Your verse-grinder's galloping lines, There seems rare inspiration in Rowing! The Muse, who politely declines To patronise pessimist twitters, Has smiled on these stanzas, which smack Of health, honest zeal, foaming "bitters," And vigour of brain and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various

... drink known as Hop Bitters is said to owe many of its supposed virtues to the bryony root, substituted for the mandrake which it is alleged to contain. The true mandrake is a gruesome herb, which was held in superstitious awe by the Greeks and the Romans. Its root was forked, and ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... moral character, we do not hesitate to say, that he has no grain of vice or meanness in him, but represents just that degree of virtue which all men relish without being obliged to respect. He is a good man, as his bitters are good,—an unquestionable goodness. Not what is called a good man,—good to be considered, as a work of art in galleries and museums,—but a good fellow, that is, good to be associated with. Who ever thought of the religion of an innkeeper—whether ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... not faint-hearted; Life ne'er was ordained to be shadeless and bright; One morn from the other by night-time is parted; The sun always shines though we see not the light; Misfortunes in life, like the nettle, prove harmless, If grappled stout-hearted and fearlessly presst; Rich sweets, without bitters, soon cloy and grow charmless, Then press on, despair not, and hope ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... papa was in a devil of a taking; and I had to go and lunch at Ferrier's in a strangely begrutten state, which was infra dig. for a homilist on liberty. It was about four, I suppose, that we met in the Lothian Road,—had we the price of two bitters between ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with the canoe's sail; and we put a case of champagne on board, and a tub of ice, and bread, and cold meat, and butter, and jam, and cigars, and cigarettes, and liquors, and a cocktail shaker, and a bottle of olives stuffed with red peppers, for Billoo, and two kinds of bitters, and everything else to eat or drink that anybody could think of, and some camp-chairs, and cards for bridge, and score-pads, and pencils, and a folding table. Of course, most of the things got soaked the minute we launched the door, but there wasn't time to do the thing ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... all the afternoon that I owe rent for a fortnight to a devil in female form, and that unless someone buys 'A Sunset over the Surrey Cliffs seen Upside Down,' Gerty will be on the streets? Make it beer with a dash o' bitters." ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... tell ye what ye ought to do," continued the man. "Ye ought to take a nip of whiskey with some bitters in it. It's always kinder damp airly in the mornin', and ye must feel it more, bein' in a strange place. I've always thought a strange place was damper, airly in the mornin', than a place ye're used ter; and there's nothin' like whiskey with a little bitters ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton

... that is gentle will make a kind wife; The magpie that prateth will stir thee to strife: 'Twere better to tarry, Unless thou canst marry To sweeten the bitters of life! ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper

... situation,—one deservin' uv your pity,— No human, livin', female thing this side of Denver City! But jest a lot uv husky men that lived on sand 'nd bitters,— Do you wonder that that woman's face consoled the lonesome critters? And not a one but what it served in some way to remind him Of a mother or a sister or a sweetheart left behind him; And some looked back on happier days, and saw the old-time faces And heerd the dear familiar ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... social pleasures and high living. Consequently, gentlemen," and now he spoke very fast, as if fearful of interruption, "you must have, all of you, experienced some of the evils of indigestion, and it is to relieve these that I have prepared my Binocular Barberry Bitters—" ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various

... of taking a little lunch just before they begin dinner. This lunch is upon a side table in the dining room, and consists of cordial, spirits or bitters, with morsels of herring, caviar, and dried meat or fish. It performs the same office as the American cocktail, but is oftener taken, is more popular and more respectable. After the lunch we sat down to dinner. Fish formed the first ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... to fish, or, waiting until the 19th, to leave Boston by boat and go up and down the shore to see how fared their summer cottages during the winter storms; some even imagine they have malaria and long for bitters—as many men ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... Admit her! (Exit Gaspard) My gentle one! my desolate, orphan maid, if any softening drop were yet permitted in my cup of bitters, I think the affectionate hand of Geraldine would mingle and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... feeling a constant craving for something bitter, I at last prescribed for myself. Passing a store where liquor was sold, my eye accidentally rested upon a placard in the window which read "Stoughton's Bitters." This preparation gave me momentary relief, and the only appreciable relief I found in medicine during ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... it's worth," Lois cut in impatiently. "It's nothing more nor less than that I had to ring twice for poor Lydia before she came," she explained to Dundee. "Tracey is full of original ideas about cocktails, and wanted some sort of bitters. He was going to shout for Lydia, but I stepped on the button under the dining table, and the poor thing—in the basement nursing her jaw, probably—didn't hear. Tracey and I got to kidding, as Janet says, and had scarcely ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... middle day of the Fair, everybody that you ever did know or hear tell of. You'll be going along, kind of half-listening to the man selling Temperance Bitters, and denouncing the other bitters because they have "al-cue-hawl" in them, and "al-cue-hawl will make you drunk," (which is perfectly true), and kind of half-listening to the man with the electric machine, declaring: "Ground is ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... "Dodd's Family Bitters," said the man, waking out of his abstraction with a start and resuming his working manner. "The best bitter in the market." He alluded to it in the singular. "Like to look at it? No trouble to show goods, as the fellah says," he went on hastily, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... a scowl. "I know what you're going to do. You'll read us some exciting stuff, and get us all worked up, and then in the last paragraph you'll stumble on the fact that some well-known Tottenville man was cured of all his ailments by Brown's Blood Bitters." ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock

... President Abraham into his cabinet to issue a proclamation, the Reverend Jeremiah into his pulpit with a scathing homily, Poet-Laureate David to the "Atlantic" with a burning lyric, and Major-General Joab to the privacy of his tent, there to calm his perturbed spirit with Drake's Plantation Bitters. In humble imitation of another, I would state that this indorsement of the potency of a specific is entirely gratuitous, and that I am stimulated thereto by no remuneration, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... she treats all things, and ne'er retreats From any thing, this epic will contain A wilderness of the most rare conceits, Which you might elsewhere hope to find in vain. 'T is true there be some bitters with the sweets, Yet mix'd so slightly, that you can't complain, But wonder they so few are, since my tale is 'De rebus ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... hony, venison, wilde fowle, forests, woods of all sorts, Palm-trees, Cypresse and Cedars, Bayes ye highest and greatest; with also the fayrest vines in all the world.... And the sight of the faire medows is a pleasure not able to be expressed with tongue; full of Hernes, Curlues, Bitters, Mallards, Egrepths, Woodcocks, and all other kind of small birds; with Harts, Hindes, Buckes, wilde Swine, and all other kindes of wilde beastes, as we perceived well, both by their footing there ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... dear; * When shall Disunion come to end and dawn the Union-day? O favour like the full moon's face of sheen, indeed I'm he * Whom thou didst leave with vitals torn when faring on thy way. Would I had never seen thy sight, or met thee for an hour; * Since after sweetest taste of thee to bitters I'm a prey. Ma'aruf will never cease to be enthralled by Dunya's[FN59] charms * And long live she albe he die whom love and longing slay, O brilliance, like resplendent sun of noontide, deign them heal * His heart for kindness[FN60] and the fire of longing love allay! Would Heaven ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... man must take his share of both. I have taken care, as you well know, to secure a certain portion of the pleasures of this life. It was not natural that the thing should last for ever, so I have quite made up my mind to drinking the bitters since I have sipped the sweets. On this last business I have staked my all, and lost my all; and if my poor brother had not done the same, and lost his life into the bargain, I should not much ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... the country, he was absolved from all work and could give undivided attention to the dinner which his cook had improvised. (But he must get an ice-safe capable of holding an adequate week-end supply. Dinner with only a choice of sherry and of gin and bitters, with no opportunity for a cocktail suggested "roughing it" to his mind.) He dined with a book propped against its silver reading-stand leisurely and warm after his bath, comfortable in a soft ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... handed me another gun, and I fixed him off in like manner. A fourth, then a fifth seized the match, who both met with the same fate. Then the whole party gave it up as a bad job, and hurried off to the camp, leaving the cannon ready charged where they had planted it. I came down, took my bitters, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... as—English ridicule of German awkwardness. His antipathy toward us seems to have grown in intensity, like many of his other antipathies; and in his "Vermischte Schriften" he is more bitter than ever. Let us quote one of his philippics, since bitters are understood to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... be seen in heaps on the counter at the drug store especially in the spring months when "Healey's Bitters" and "Allen's Cherry Pectoral" were most needed to "purify the blood." They were given out freely, but the price of the marvellous mixtures they celebrated was always one dollar a bottle, and many a broad coin went for a "bitter" which should have gone to buy a new ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... drunken bout, wretched and desolate, I was almost sorry that I had agreed to do so. My tongue was dry, my throat parched, my temples throbbed as if they would burst, and I had a horrible burning feeling in my stomach which almost maddened me, and I felt that I must have some bitters or I should die. So I yielded to my appetite, which would not be appeased, and repaired to the same hotel where I had squandered away so many shillings before; there I drank three or four times, until my nerves were a little strung, and then ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... Me.' If earth be dark, let us look to Heaven. If the world with its millions seems to have no friend in it for us, let us turn to Him who never leaves us. If dear ones are torn from our grasp, let us grasp God. Solitude is bitter; but, like other bitters, it is a tonic. It is not all loss if the trees which with their leafy beauty shut out the sky from us are felled, and so we see ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... that renders death by some malignant type of fever less probable. Some regard it as a sort of initiation, like that into the Odd Fellows, which renders one liable to his regular dues thereafter. Others consider it merely the acquisition of a habit of taking every morning before breakfast a dose of bitters, composed of whiskey and assafoetida, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... going to and fro, a hurrying and bustling in the crowd, a hum as of a distant fair pervading the place, and by evening the total of the day's collections is added up, and while the sahib and his friends take their sherry and bitters, the omlah and servants retire to wash and feast, and prepare for ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... village street; Her snowy slate was always quite full. Some said her bitters tasted sweet, And some pronounced her pills delightful. 'Twas strange—I knew not what it meant— She seemed a nymph from Eldorado; Where'er she came, where'er she went, Grief ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... delightful feeling of security from capture, and the glorious prospect of a good night's rest in a four-poster, wound one up into an inexpressible state of jollity. If some of us had a little headache in the morning, surely it was small blame to us. Our host's cocktails, made of champagne bitters and pounded ice, soon put all things to rights; and after breakfast we lounged down to the quays on the river-side, which were piled mountains high with cotton-bales and tobacco tierces, and mixed in the lively and busy scene of ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... wife or daughter would probably feel disagreeably, if he should find branded indelibly across her smooth white forehead, or on her snowy shoulder in blue and red letters such a phrase as this: "Try the Jigamaree Bitters!" Very much like this is the sort of advertising I am speaking of. It is not likely that I shall be charged with squeamishness on this question. I can readily enough see the selfishness and vulgarity of this particular sort of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... swamps and marshes produced by the same cause, makes a dry cellar an impossibility; and this shut-in and poisonous moisture makes malaria inevitable. The dwellers on low lands are the pill and patent-medicine takers; and no civilized country swallows the amount of tonics and bitters ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... beset their path, And threatened to divide them, They coaxed away the beldame's wrath, Ere she had breath to chide them, By vowing all her rags were silk, And all her bitters, honey, And showing taste for bread and milk, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... say that," said Drysdale. "Here, Henry, get out a bottle of Schiedam. Have a taste of bitters? there's nothing like it to set one's ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... the general had thrice performed already. "If I'd only known of this, gentlemen," said their host, but a moment earlier, with resultant access of cordiality, "and could have found a drop of Angostura about the post, we'd have had a 'pick-me-up' before dinner, but d'you know I—I seldom have bitters about me. I've no use for cocktails. I never touch a drop of stingo before twelve at noon or after twelve at night. I agree with old Bluegrass. Bluegrass was post surgeon at the Presidio when the Second Artillery came ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... pussy sheathes her claws most carefully, but should baby draw back her arm suddenly, and pussy accidentally scratch that tender skin, how the little girl cries! It is, perhaps, her first lesson that sweets and bitters, pleasures and pains, meekness and ferocity, are mingled in ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... am pa'alized to think I kep' you waitin'. Just up from my office. Been workin' like a slave, suh. Only five minutes to dress befo' dinner. Have a drop of sherry and a dash of bitters, or shall we wait for Fitzpatrick? No? All right! He should have been here befo' this. You don't know Fitz? Most extraord'nary man; a great mind, suh; literature, science, politics, finance, everything at his fingers' ends. He has been of the greatest service to me since I have ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... understood that everything was his in life, and not another's; that he had his nature, by Jove, his appetite, his trousers, his everything, his, more absolutely and more completely than anyone else's. Then he looked round him with a satisfied air. His bitters ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... against her imagination; and it was beautiful to see how, watching to avoid giving each other pain, striving continually to show the bright side of every question, the one to the other, and extract sweets instead of bitters from every little incident, led to their actually enjoying even the privations which exercised their tenderness towards ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... your bitters," he exclaimed; and, as if to set the example, filled a big tumbler to the brim, gulped it down as if it had been water, smacked his lips, and incontinently tendered it to Archer, who, to my great amazement, filled himself likewise a ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... conservatory where the orchids were kept. Altogether, it was a charming place. However, adjoining it was a huge vacant lot with cows in it. It was full of dry weeds and heaps of ashes, while around it was an enormous fence painted with signs of cigars, patent bitters, and soap. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... upon her healing powers, and suffered no outsider to doctor her husband or her slaves. "Hush, Silas, don't say a word until I tell you. Cupid—you are the only one with any sense—measure Paisley a dose of Jamaica ginger from the bottle on the desk in the office, and send Abram a drink of the bitters in the brown jug—why, Car'line, what do you mean by coming into the house with a slit in ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... is used internally in the same diseases as catechu, and when combined with aromatics and bitters, in intermittent fevers. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... doors, to catch any transient customer, who might feel the necessity of washing away the damps of the past night, in some invigorating stomachic This cordial was very generally taken in the British provinces, under the various names of "bitters," "juleps," "morning-drams," "fogmatics," &c., according as the situation of each district appeared to require some particular preventive. The custom is getting a little into disuse, it is true; but ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... on his overcoat, took a small glass of bitters from a bottle kept behind the large mirror, locked up the store, proceeded to the nearest restaurant, hastily despatched a lean, unsatisfactory chop and a cup of weak tea, gave a half dime to the waiter who bade him, in a ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... fixed on intestinal worms, Pecuchet noticed a singular spot on Madame Bordin's cheek. The doctor had for a long time been treating it with bitters. Round at first as a twenty-sou piece, this spot had enlarged and formed a red circle. They offered to cure it for her. She consented, but made it a condition that the ointment should be applied by Bouvard. She took a seat before the window, unfastened the upper portion of her ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... account of foiled ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R. R. all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati—dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you're ever up that way, don't fail to let one try you. And, again,' says I, 'I have never yet went back on a friend. I've stayed by 'em when they had plenty, and when adversity's overtaken me I've never ...
— Options • O. Henry

... think the "cart" was on its way to Tyburn! There appears to be considerable doubt as to whether Buccaneer has eaten anything lately or not, so I must discard him; but I think if he were given a sherry and bitters at once he might recover his appetite and win, as he is known to be a "glutton" for work! JEWITT's best will take some beating, when we know which it is, which we shall do shortly, as no stable is more ready than this to let everyone into the secret of their "good things;", so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various

... BITTERS. Bruise an ounce of gentian root, and two drams of cardamom seeds together: add an ounce of lemon peel, and three drams of Seville orange peel. Pour on the ingredients a pint and half of boiling water, and let it stand an hour closely covered: then ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... but this man being the first that was caught, was tried by court-martial and sentenced to fifty lashes as an example. The man asked the colonel to look over it as it was his first offence, but the colonel said, "The horse's looks tell a different tale from that; he has long had the bitters, and you the sweet, and now it is time things should be the other way round." Certainly the horses' forage could not at all times be procured, and especially in the winter, but for that very reason they had more need of it when it could be. The best horses I saw during the ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence

... ensued from a quarter of a century of housekeeping. One after another was taken down and anxiously examined, until at last, oh joyful discovery! the label of one showed the picture of an unmistakable bottle, over which a picture of the inventor of the bitters which it was supposed to contain was fondly leaning, as if it were his staff of life. The young artists greeted it with delight, and with it for a model produced such delightful results that by half-past eight the sign shone out in blue and ...
— Three People • Pansy

... and here the strawberry crimsoned the cream that lapped its blushing sides. Here the Arabian berry evolved clouds of perfume; here Curacoa glistened from behind its strawy shield; and here a decanter of warranted real French brandy, side by side with a bottle of Stoughton's bitters, suggested that a cocktail might not only be desirable, but possible. But Roseton's eyes gazed languidly upon the spectacle, and the walls of the pyramid again ascending, shut the quadruple banquets from ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Miss Flitters's birthday, and she woke with a start and hurried down to see what the postman had brought. There were five parcels and a letter. The letter was from Miss Bitters. "Dear Miss Flitters," it ran, "I am so sorry to hear of your cold, and in the hope that it will do you good, I am sending you a ——. I always find it excellent, although mother prefers ——. We both wish you many ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... difference between us, so far as the crop and the tools go, is, after all, ignominiously small. He dreaded the weevil in his beans, and we the club-foot in our cabbages; we have the "Herald," and he had none; we have "Plantation-Bitters," and he had his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... ball a year ago, To-night I pay for your bread and cheese, "And a glass of bitters, if you please, For you drank ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons

... glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons. The top of the closed square piano served also as a sideboard for viands and sweets. At a smaller sideboard in one corner two young men were standing, drinking hop-bitters. ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... piece of iron held by her in the other hand while in bed. At the ends of the rods were the names of planets, such as Jupiter and Mercury. He asked the age of the woman and the hour she was born, saying he wanted to find out under what planet she came into the world. He gave her some bitters to take, but she died a few days afterwards. The defence was that the rods and piece of metal were a rude method of using electricity, by which means the defendant had effected many cures; but no explanation ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant



Words linked to "Bitters" :   strong drink, John Barleycorn, booze, hard liquor, hard drink, spirits, liquor



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com