bitter [OE] Like bit, bitter is related to *bite because of its biting taste. In the phrase to the bitter end [M19th] ‘until something is finished, no matter what’, is probably not from this word. It derives instead from a nautical term bitter [E17th], meaning the last part of a cable, that goes around the ‘bitts’ or fastening points for ropes on board ship. The biblical quotation ‘her end is bitter as wormwood’ may have helped popularize the phrase. Many Englishmen love their pint of bitter. This use seems to have started life as Oxford University slang in the 1850s, when students would talk of ‘doing bitters’. Hops make *beer more bitter than ale.