Bite Idioms

Several words have become part of the language in being used in phrases. Last time we looked at ‘hard’ and now look at ‘bite’.

Bite the bullet first appears in the 1891 novel The Light That Failed by Rudyard Kipling. It is often said to originate in a bullet being bitten on by a patient undergoing an operation in times when anesthetics were unavailable – while this sounds good and is likely of military origins, records show the leather strap was employed nearly all the time. In the 1975 film Bite the Bullet, one character breaks a tooth and exposes the nerve, but with treatment unavailable uses the casing from a bullet to perform a repair.

Bites, as slang to describe something one doesn’t like, has unclear origins but doesn’t seem to have been in use before the 1960s.

Bite the dust is first known in 1748, appearing in Tobias Smollett’s translation of The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane.

Bite off more than one can chew is said to originate in the early 19th century when American’s would more often chew tobacco. Greedy tobacco chewers hoping to get a good return for their money would do just what the phrase says.

Bite one’s head off has been used since the original early sixteenth century version of ‘bite someone’s nose off’ fell out of favour.

Bite the hand that feeds you is first seen around 600BC by the Greek poet Sappho; while English had to wait until 1711 when political writer Edmund Burke wrote “having looked to the government for bread, on the first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.”

Bitten by the bug has been seen since 1739, when it appeared in the writings of J. Douglas.

Bite one’s tongue is first seen in the 1590s, yet it replaces an earlier 14th century phrase ‘bite one’s lip’ with the same meaning.

Another bite at the cherry is thought to have originated with the cherry pickers – that’s people who actually picked cherries by hand, and not a rising platform – who were said to have eaten a good proportion of what they picked.

Bark is worse than his bite is first seen in English from the 16th century, yet the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus used it in the first century AD.

Hair of the dog that bit you, often abbreviated to ‘hair of the dog’, began as an actual medical treatment where hair from the rabid dog that bit a person would be applied to the wound in the belief it would help cure the patient. Having a drink to cure a hangover uses the same logic.

Sound bite has only been seen since the 1970s, although it took a decade or two to come into popular usage.

Love bite, also known as a hickey, is first described in 1855 by the German romantic poet Heine, who wrote “And at the shoulder looked she too; And them she kissed contented; Three little scars, joy; Wounds her love in Passion’s hour indented.”

Bite me, a slang term suggesting discontent or disapproval, originated in American campuses during the 1980s.

Universal Languages Few Understand

Anyone who has read much of this blog will be aware my interest is in the development of words and languages. Whilst modern languages are most often named after the nation where they were originally spoken, there are those which have no national identity. I am thinking here of the artificial languages created in comparatively recent times, the most famous of which is Esperanto although there are a number of computer languages included. As these are such recent creations, I would hope the names would have been well thought out beforehand. At least the modern origins should mean there are no doubts as to the origins.

Esperanto was created in 1887 by Polish-born Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof but not officially named until five years later. Oddly the name of the language comes from a term in Esperanto where Doktoro Esperanto means 'one who hopes'. This is the pen-name used by Zamenhof and on the title page.

Idiom Neutral was published in 1902 by the International Academy of the Universal Language, it is a revised form of Volapuk (see below), this considered imperfect. The reworking brought in many western terms and while technically a revision is in almost every aspect a new language - the name describes 'the neutral language'.

Interglossa was invented by biologist Lancelot Hogben in an attempt to provide a link between science terminology and etymology and the classical languages after having noticed the difficulty students had in learning scientific terms. This 'between languages' idea is also the origin of the name.

Interlingua is a computer language produced by the International Auxiliary Language Association, this founded by the American heiress Alice Vanderbilt Morris in the 1920s. As a name it speaks for itself.

Novial is derived from nov 'new' plus the initial letters IAL standing for International Auxiliary Language. It is designed to allow those who speak native languages to speak a single common tongue. With sources in Romance, Germanic, Occidental and Ido tongues, it first came to light in the late 1920s and virtually disappeared with the death of its inventor, Otto Jespersen, in 1943. However the internet has seen a minor revival of interest.

Occidental, later known as Interlingue, was another planned language to allow those of differing tongues to converse. Created by German Edgar de Wahl its name is taken from the French and Latin for 'western'.

Tutonish was created in 1901 by Elias Molee, with revisions in 1905 and 1915. It is the first Pan-Germanic language and intended as an Anglo-German unifying language and it is from the name virtually suggested itself. However it never really caught on, as evidenced by its reworking and also the various forms of its name, including Tutonish, Teutonish, Teutonik, Alteutonish, Altutonish, Altetonik, Nu Teutonish, Niu Teutonish, and Neuteutonish.

Volapuk was published in 1880, the work of German priest Johann Martin Schleyer. He claimed he had been told by God to create an international language, one he named to mean 'world speech'. Perhaps unkindly the word is used in other languages, Danish for example, to mean 'nonsense'.

Algol is not derived from the star in the constellation of Perseus, this from the Arabic al-ghul or 'the demon', but a contraction of 'algorithmic language'.

Basic is a computer language, an acronym standing for 'Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code'. It was invented by Hungarian-born US computer scientist John G. Kemeny in 1964.

Cobol is another computer language and acronym created in 1960 by the US Defense Department and describing 'Common Business-Oriented Language'.

Fortran is also a computer language, one dating from 1956 and an abbreviated form of 'formula translation'.

Modula is a programming language created by the Swiss Niklaus Wirth in the 1970s. It is derived from the Pascal (see below) language and named because it uses a module system unlike its predecessor.

Pascal is a computer language invented in 1971 and named for the 17th-century French scholar Blaise Pascal, who invented a calculating machine in 1642.

One thought - if the idea is to produce a single language spoken by us all (presumably as a second language), why are there so many?

A Tree of Indo-European Languages

Over the last few weeks I have looked at the origins of the names of cities from many European countries. In doing this I wanted to examine the links between the various languages by comparing the elements which make up these names to English place names.

Last time I looked at Greek places which, for the most part, were derived from mythological figures. Conversely many of the other place names are derived from words which ultimately can be traced to more ancient tongues. Without a doubt the most commonly mentioned early language is Greek. In truth this is probably because more is known about this particular language than any other of comparable age.

I thought this might the ideal time to take a short break from looking at the place names and take a brief glimpse into the Indo-European group of languages and examine the family tree. The following image will show the development best of all. Note the timelines are approximate and only represent the first accepted appearance of a distinct tongue.

It is worthwhile highlighting the languages which have resulted in the majority of English place names. The Celtic languages first emerged and diversified around five thousand years ago, around the same time as the Germanic and Italic groups. The Celtic tongues have produced many of the topographical names, while the Germanic group contains Old English and Old Scandinavian, the two tongues which have contributed more to English place names than any other.