Now You Know It All

Photograph by Alaskan Dude

Q:  Where did the expression “bite the dust” come from?

A:  We probably all heard “bite the dust” for the first time while watching an old Western B movie when a cowboy hero does away with a pesky varmint to impress the schoolmarm.  The phrase was first used in English literature in 1750 to imply wounding or killing by satirical novelist Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) in Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, his translation of the original French novel by Alain-Rene Lesage: “We made two of them bite the dust and the others betake themselves to flight.”  The inspiration for the expression can be traced back to the Bible in Psalm 72: “They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him and his enemies shall lick the dust.”