to bite the big one
1
9.9
- idiom
- Slang
:
fracasar estrepitosamente
- When her business went bankrupt, she realized she had bitten the big one with her investments.
Well, on Friday night, he bit the big one.
- Well, on Friday night, he bit the big one.
Examples
-
Maybe I should just bite the big one and call it quits.
-
After months of hard work, his project finally bit the big one when the funding fell through.
-
The team's final game of the season bit the big one when they lost in the last few minutes.
Antonyms
How Bad
43
4.4
- Slang
1
9.9
898
1.0
1
4.2
- Informal
597
2.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
The idiomatic sense 'to experience a major failure / die' cannot be derived from the literal meanings of 'bite', 'big' and 'one' — the phrase is slangy and metaphorical rather than compositional. There is no straightforward cross-linguistic or compositional logic that would allow a B1 learner who knows the individual words to predict this meaning, so it is not transparent.
Etymology
The idiom bite the big one may come from the strong image of someone taking a very large bite—the bite of the big one—and then choking or falling down. That's why today saying someone bite the big one means 'to have a very big failure or serious setback'.