Shaggy Dogs & Black Sheep by Albert Jack

October 16th 2005


To Bite the Dust

When something has Bitten the Dust it is worn out, broken down or even dead. The expression became widespread thanks to the American cowboy movies so popular in the early half of the 20th century. It is highly likely to have been picked up by US scriptwriters from a poem by the 19th-century sonneteer William Cullen Bryant which included the line: 'his fellow warriors, many a one, fall round him to the earth and bite the dust'. Although the phrased originally applied to warriors (or indeed cowboys) who died in battle, it is now frequently used to describe almost anything that is no longer any use to us. For example, your relationship with someone may have 'bitten the dust' and so might your old car or the new washing machine (good thing it's still under guarantee). The origin of the expression goes back a very long way - it is in fact one of our oldest idioms, even pre-dating the Bible by 850 years. While Psalm 72:9 gives us: 'They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust', the source of the phrase can be found nearly three thousand years ago in the Iliad, written sometime in the eighth century BC. In the text, Homer describes the legend of the Trojan War and how soldiers fell dying with their faces in the dirt as though they were 'biting the dust'.