bite the dust

Literally, to fall face down in the dirt; to suffer a defeat: “Once again, the champion wins, and another contender bites the dust.”

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Idioms and Phrases

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.”

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Example Sentences

Taylor fought them, crooked judge and all, to a bite-the-dust finish.

From Project Gutenberg

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April 23, 2024inveterate

[in-vet-er-it ]

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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