bite the hand that feeds you

To scorn or poorly treat those on whom you depend or derive benefit. You might not agree with your parents' rules, but be careful about biting the hand that feeds you, because you owe everything you have to them. In politics, if you bite the hand that feeds, benefactors can very quickly crush your political future.

Show ingratitude, turn against a benefactor. For example, The college gave me a scholarship, so I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds me and criticize its hiring policies . Used about 600 b.c. by the Greek poet Sappho, this metaphor of a dog biting its master was first recorded in English in 1711.

COMMON If someone bites the hand that feeds them, they behave badly towards a person who has helped them or given them money. She is sometimes critical of the film industry, but ultimately she has no intention of biting the hand that feeds her. They pay him eighty thousand pounds a week and there he is, criticizing the manager. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

To show ingratitude; to turn against those who have helped you. The metaphor of a dog biting the master or mistress who fills its bowl is very old. It was especially popular in the eighteenth century; for example, the Irish statesman Edmund Burke wrote, “And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them” (1790). Two centuries later, a physicist who insisted on anonymity said, “Nobel laureates don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them” and hence are reluctant to criticize the award system (New York Times, Oct. 17, 1989).