"That bites the big one!"

[Dave Wilton]

I recall "that bites" and "that bites the big one" from throughout my childhood. There is no gap in usage from the 1960s to the present in my experience.

And the game Marco Polo was (is?) a very common swimming pool game. I played it many times. It's a variant of blind man's buff in which the person who is "it" can say "marco" and the other players must say "polo" in response as a means of aural assistance.


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilson Gray
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2012 1:29 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "That bites the big one!"

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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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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