"That bites the big one!"

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Apr 30 05:45:01 UTC 2012


I've heard "bites a big one" (or "THE big one") fairly routinely, at
least since 1983 (college crowd back then). I don't find this at all rare.

VS-)

On 4/30/2012 1:28 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> This was spoken by a female, college-student character in a movie from
> 1999. This was the first time that I've heard anyone say that since I
> got out of the Army in 1962.
>
> I heard "That bites!" while in the military and since then. I've
> always assumed that the latter is a clip of the former, for no better
> reason than that it's "obvious." In the military, we also used, "That
> bites the meat" and "… bites the green wienie!" And I've always
> considered all of these to be variants of one another for the usual
> reason: it's "obvious."
>
> I hadn't heard any of these before I joined the Army in 1959. But, of
> course, there were hundreds of expressions that I heard first and used
> last in the Army, including terminology, jargon, and slang.
>
> It all just depends, I think. For example, on TV, I've heard many
> references to a game(?) called "marco polo" that's played only(?) in
> swimming pools. It's assumed that the audience gets these references.
> I don't get the references. By coincidence, I've never heard a single
> reference to marco polo anywhere except on the tube.
>
> Another one is the game of "I spy." I know this game quite well as a
> trivially-distinct variant of hide-and(-go)-seek. In movies and on TV,
> it seems to be a kind of guessing game.
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> --
> -Wilson

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