bite to eat
- noun
- Informal
- We'll go to our place and then have a bite to eat.
People are going to want to stop at rest stops, malls, but like obviously restaurants and things like that where it's easy to take a break and have a bite to eat.
- People are going to want to stop at rest stops, malls, but like obviously restaurants and things like that where it's easy to take a break and have a bite to eat.
- Whether you were at the grocery store grabbing a bite to eat.
- I have a little little bite to eat at at break time and then lunchtime I used to go to after school clubs.
Examples
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How about we go out for a bite to eat tonight?
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Let's go downtown for a bite to eat, yeah?
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Oh, we're gonna go get a bite to eat.
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We're just trying to find a bite to eat.
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Hey, where can I get a bite to eat with my son?
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We're gonna go grab a bite to eat.
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Wanna grab a bite to eat?
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Immediately after work, he would change his clothes, grab a bite to eat, and go out.
Fiction book (1998) -
Why don't you have a bite to eat with us?
Fiction book (1999) -
How about we go out for a bite to eat tonight?
Synonyms
A small amount of food eaten quickly
A quick, simple meal you make and eat when short on time
Antonyms
How Filling
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a small meal or light snack' is directly derivable from combining 'bite' (a small mouthful or quick snack) with the purpose phrase 'to eat' — together they denote a small amount to eat. This noun + to-infinitive composition is a regular, cross-linguistic pattern and follows normal English semantics, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Bite to eat comes from the simple picture of taking a single bite to eat when you have only a little time. So, it came to mean 'a small meal' or 'a quick snack'.