bite the dust
bite the dust
1. slang Of a person, to die. We were so lucky to avoid that massive accident—we might have bitten the dust!
2. slang Of a machine, to be near a complete breakdown or loss of functionality. Judging by all that noise coming from her car, I'm pretty sure it's about to bite the dust. I have to go buy a new blender because mine bit the dust today.
3. slang To become unpopular or irrelevant. Sadly, it doesn't take long for the latest technological innovations to bite the dust.
See also: bite, dust
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
bite the dust
1. Sl. to die. A shot rang out, and another cowboy bit the dust. The soldier was too young to bite the dust.
2. Sl. to break; to fail; to give out. My old car finally bit the dust. This pen is out of ink and has bitten the dust.
See also: bite, dust
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
bite the dust
Suffer defeat or death, as in The 1990 election saw both of our senators bite the dust. Although this expression was popularized by American Western films of the 1930s, in which either cowboys or Indians were thrown from their horses to the dusty ground, it originated much earlier. Tobias Smollett had it in Gil Blas (1750): "We made two of them bite the dust."
See also: bite, dust
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
bite the dust
COMMON
1. If something bites the dust, it fails or stops existing. With the news that milk chocolate can help cut cholesterol, yet another healthy eating fad bites the dust. Quite a few restaurants have bitten the dust recently.
2. If someone bites the dust, they die. A Wild West showman nearly bit the dust when he blew himself up making blank bullets in his garden shed. Note: This expression is used to refer to someone's death in a humorous way. Note: In stories about the Wild West, cowboys were said to `bite the dust' when they were shot and fell off their horses.
See also: bite, dust
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
bite the dust
1 be killed. 2 fail. informalSee also: bite, dust
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
bite the ˈdust
(informal)1 fail, or be defeated or destroyed: Thousands of small businesses bite the dust every year.
2 (humorous) die
See also: bite, dust
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
bite the dust
1. tv. to die. A shot rang out, and another cowboy bit the dust.
2. tv. to break; to fail; to give out. My car finally bit the dust.
See also: bite, dust
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
bite the dust
Slang1. To fall dead, especially in combat.
2. To be defeated.
3. To come to an end.
See also: bite, dust
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition.
bite the dust, to
To be defeated or killed. The term became popular from American western films, in which cowboys and/or Indians frequently “bit the dust”—that is, were shot or shoved off their horses to the dusty ground. It became current in the late 1930s. However, the term occurs even earlier in William Cullen Bryant’s translation (1870) of Homer’s Iliad (“his fellow warriors . . . fall round him to the earth and bite the dust”) and it also is found in translations of Virgil’s Aeneid.
See also: bite
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
- juice
- juiced
- blimp
- blimp out
- gun
- guns
- gangshag
- hunky