The Strange Origins of the Phrase "Bite the Dust"

If someone bites the dust, that traditionally implies that they fall to the ground—either deliberately, by being made or told to grovellingly fall to the floor (as in many a classic Western), or by being injured or killed (also as in many a classic Western). 

In that context, the image being conjured up here is clearly of someone lying so flatly against the ground that their mouth touches it, hence “biting” the dust. From there, the phrase has come to be used more generally to describe anything that falls, fails, or somehow comes to some kind of equally disastrous or humiliating end (as in the classic Queen track). 

The History of “Bite the Dust”

Despite those ties to popular culture, though, the origins of biting the dust stretch back in time a lot further than you might expect. The Oxford English Dictionary has unearthed its earliest record of the phrase in a document dating from 1578, which talks of cannon fire on a battlefield that was so powerful that it “played at pleasure through those poor bodies that lay grovelling biting the dust.” 

Clearly, this quote (taken from an account of the Battle of Moncontour just nine years earlier in 1569) makes it obvious that the original implication here was that the individual who is “biting the dust” has been killed, not merely floored, toppled, or made to lie down.

With that in mind, though, there may be an argument for saying that the battlefield origins of biting the dust lie even further back in the mists of etymological time. 

Did Homer Originate the Phrase “Bite the Dust”?

The English poet Samuel Butler’s 1898 prose edition of the Iliad also used this expression in his rendition of Book II of Homer’s poem, in which Agamemnon beseeches Jove to ensure his sword “may pierce the shirt of Hector about his heart, and that full many of his comrades may bite the dust as they fall dying round him.” 

Butler’s rendering of Homer’s words here is actually surprisingly in line with the original Ancient Greek, as Homer had essentially written of Hector’s slain companions lying about him “in the dust” of battle, with “the earth in their teeth.” That’s not quite biting the dust in the modern sense, of course, but it clearly paints a similar image; whether that’s enough to fully credit the origins of biting the dust to Homer, though, might be an etymological step too far. 

Whether ancient or (relatively) modern, though, the phrase bite the dust appears to have originated on the battlefield, and has long been associated with an image of a fallen troop or soldier collapsed onto the ground. From there, the looser and more general sense of something simply failing, breaking, or coming to an end by biting the dust began to emerge in the 1800s, before catching on more widely in the 20th century.

Read More: