[General] A "bitter" manner? What does this mean?

[cubezero3]

Hello, everyone.

I came across three words in my dictionary today, which were acerbic, acidulous and acrid. Accord to my oxford dictionary, they can all be used to refer to a kind of manner that's considered "bitter".

I can't imagine what a "bitter" manner would be like. Does it simply mean rude?

Besides, are these three words commonly used?

Many thanks

Richard

 

[White Hat]

It means someone is never happy about anything and constantly attacks people verbally. It also can mean sarcastic.

 

[5jj]

It means someone is never happy about anything and constantly attacks people verbally. It also can mean sarcastic.

My ears are burning.;-)

 

[BobK]

And I'll address your last question.

'Acerbic' is not uncommon, if a bit formal. Acerbic people are more commonly called 'sharp-tongued'.
'Acidulous' is even more formal, and I would think quite rarely used, I believe there's a Longman's dictionary that will give you the actual numbers. I'm surprised that your dictionary suggests 'acrid' as a synonym; it more commonly collocates with 'smell/smoke/fumes...'.

Here are the first few BNC hits for 'acrid' followed by a noun:

1 ACRID SMOKE 19
2 ACRID SMELL 14
3 ACRID , 9
4 ACRID FUMES 7
5 ACRID STENCH 5
6 ACRID FLAVOUR 2
7 ACRID SCENT 2
8 ACRID ODOUR 2
9 ACRID . 2
10 ACRID AIR 2
11 ACRID TASTE 2
12 ACRID TANG 2
13 ACRID STINK 2
14 ACRID WANT 1
...

See more here: British National Corpus (BYU-BNC)

There are plenty more, but I think you get the picture. All the others have only one hit, suggesting that they may be new figurative uses. In fact I suspect that in the case of the last on that list 'acrid want' is an intentionally odd-sounding collocation, emphasizing that the writer is talking about the sort of poverty that tends to imply living in smelly surroundings: the surrounding text is '...to make him go away; and she smelt him, and the acrid want in him' - in which the idea of smell is very clear.

There's a rather old-fashioned idiom meaning 'adopt an acerbic tone': 'come the acid' - very informal, and rather archaic - sometimes used in a self-consciously prim tone of voice that implies a set of considerations of social class that belong to former times: 'Don't come the acid with me my man...'.

b