"That bites the big one!"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Valuable comments. Sounds like "It bites!" is as old as "It sucks!"  Is
that likely?   During a detailed discussion in 2004, Wilson attested to the
earliest known occurrences of "It sucks," from 1959. Presumably "It sucks!"
had been around for a while.  (See Archives under "SUX.")

HDAS has "bite" only from 1971, "bite the big one" from 1977.  No "bite the
meat."

JL



On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 6:53 AM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> Subject:      Re: "That bites the big one!"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
> -----
> 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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