gall and wormwood

gall and wormwood

Strong feelings of bitterness and resentment. ("Gall" is bile and "wormwood" is a bitter plant.) Ever since I lost the election for school president, I only feel gall and wormwood when I think of my unworthy opponent.
See also: and, gall, wormwood
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • wormwood
  • wormwood and gall
  • have no hard feelings
  • relieve
  • relieve (one's) feelings
  • relieve your feelings
  • hard feelings
  • hate
  • a thin line between love and hate
  • unmitigated gall
References in classic literature
The Millwards and the Wilsons should see with their own eyes the bright sun bursting from the cloud - and they should be scorched and dazzled by its beams; - and my own friends too should see it - they whose suspicions had been such gall and wormwood to my soul.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of Helen's warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary.
Jane Eyre
Yet there you lie and set your face against a compromise; and there you lie and taunt me with the thing that's gall and wormwood to me already.
Dead Men Tell No Tales
Indeed the whole house-front was spruce and trim, and so freshened up throughout, that if there yet remained at large any of the rioters who had been concerned in the attack upon it, the sight of the old, goodly, prosperous dwelling, so revived, must have been to them as gall and wormwood.
Barnaby Rudge A Tale Of The Riots Of Eighty
It was gall and wormwood to his soul to see that splendid, highly-accomplished woman, once so courted and admired, transformed into an active managing housewife, with hands and head continually occupied with household labours and household economy.
Agnes Grey
All this was gall and wormwood to the heart of Gabriel Grub; and when groups of children bounded out of the houses, tripped across the road, and were met, before they could knock at the opposite door, by half a dozen curly-headed little rascals who crowded round them as they flocked upstairs to spend the evening in their Christmas games, Gabriel smiled grimly, and clutched the handle of his spade with a firmer grasp, as he thought of measles, scarlet fever, thrush, whooping-cough, and a good many other sources of consolation besides.
The Posthumous Papers Of The Pickwick Club
slurry of gall and wormwood and I sent for the vet and the backhoe
The Taste of Apple