Idiom
bite the bullet
Meaning
To accept a negative aspect of a situation in order to proceed.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“I hate the dentist, but I'll bite the bullet and go.”
“The repairs were expensive, but we decided to bite the bullet and pay for them.”
“After putting it off for years, she finally bit the bullet, quit her stable job, and started the business she had always dreamed of.”
Examples
simple
“I hate the dentist, but I'll bite the bullet and go.”
contextual
“The repairs were expensive, but we decided to bite the bullet and pay for them.”
complex
“After putting it off for years, she finally bit the bullet, quit her stable job, and started the business she had always dreamed of.”
Origin
Traditionally said to come from soldiers biting a bullet during battlefield surgery without anaesthetic; first recorded figuratively in Kipling's The Light That Failed (1891).
Key words
Related idioms
- Level
- B1 · Intermediate
- Updated