Bitter end

The bitter end is the limit of one’s efforts, the last extremity. As an expression, it has been around since the late 15th/early 16th century. Shakespeare used something close to it in Measure for Measure Act IV, Scene VI, “for ‘tis a physic that’s bitter to sweet end” but this is not exactly how we use and understand the phrase today. There are two theories about its origin. The first is that it was simply a poetic way of expressing the last extremity. Bitter was used figuratively and widely by Shakespeare and many others and the ‘bitter end’ is hardly a complex verbal construction. It may also have been helped by these words from the Bible Proverbs 5:4. “But her end is bitter as wormwood.” The other theory about the origin is nautical. Bitts were the wooden posts on the deck to which ropes called bitters were attached. When these ropes were played out to moorings, the bitter end was the last piece of rope attached to the bitt. Many etymologists are sceptical about this nautical theory, not because the story itself is untrue, but because it may have been coincidental rather than defining. ‘Bitter enders’ was also the nickname given to the Boers who fought on to the bitter end in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).