A persistent feeling of bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly.
A persistent feeling of bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly; ill will arising from a sense of injury, typically directed at the person responsible.
Directed at a specific person who caused a perceived wrong, and tied to a sense of injustice. Bitterness is a more diffuse, generalized souring not necessarily aimed at a wrongdoer; anger is more acute and immediate, whereas resentment is a nursed, enduring grievance.
From French ressentiment, from ressentir “feel again, feel in turn” (re- + sentir “to feel”).
1610s, from French ressentiment, verbal noun from ressentir (Old French resentir “feel again”). It could once carry a positive sense (“be grateful for,” 1640s), now obsolete.
Early English briefly allowed a neutral/positive sense (even “be grateful for”), now obsolete; the word narrowed to the negative grievance sense. A distinct technical descendant, ressentiment, was borrowed in 1943 in a Nietzschean philosophical sense.