bite the big one
bite the big one verb: to die.
Verb
bite the big one (third-person singular simple present bites the big one, present participle biting the big one, simple past bit the big one, past participle bitten the big one)
- To die.
- Fly, be free! Well, I guess we'll have to have a quick burial at sea then. I'll notify your next of kin. Your brother bit the big one.1978 September 14, Dale McRaven, Mork & Mindy, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Mork (Robin Williams)
- "I thought all of dad's relatives bit the big one a long time ago."1983, Susan Arnout, The Frozen Lady, page 397
- Synonyms:
- bite the dust, buy the farm, buy the big one, kick the bucket, assume room temperature, auger in, be called home, be gathered to one's fathers, be like the the One, be no more
- To break down; to be impossible to repair or not worth repairing.
- Whatever air-conditioning system the car had once possessed had bitten the big one years ago; ...1988, Barbara Hambly, The silicon mage, page 5
- To perform poorly; to fail.
- Empire of the Sun was an enormous literary and commercial success in Britain but pretty much bit the Big One on its own in the United States.1990, Norman Spinrad, Science fiction in the real world, page 183
- To be unpleasant or undesirable.
- To Verdi, it bit the big one, but that was the way it worked.1996, Stephen Kimball, Death duty, page 9
- To perform fellatio.
Synonyms of bite the big one
- bite the dust
- buy the farm
- buy the big one
- kick the bucket
- assume room temperature
- auger in
- be called home
- be like the the One
- be no more
- be with Jesus
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- be with the Lord
- bite the biscuit
- buy it
- cark it
- cash in
- cash in one's chips
- check out
- close one's eyes for the last time
- code
- conk out
- croak
- cross over
- cross the Great Divide
- cross the Styx
- darken
- decease
- decompose
- dematerialize
- depart
- disincarnate
- draw one's last breath
- drop off the hooks
- exit
- expire
- fall off the twig
- flatline
- give one's all
- give up the ghost
- go for a burton
- go out
Forms of bite the big one
| third-person singular present | bites the big one |
|---|---|
| present participle | biting the big one |
| past | bit the big one |
| past participle | bitten the big one |
Questions about bite the big one
- What does bite the big one mean?
- Bite the big one means to die.
- What part of speech is bite the big one?
- Bite the big one is a verb.
- What is the past tense of bite the big one?
- The past tense of bite the big one is bit the big one.
Words near bite the big one in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bite the big one (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-bite the big one.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bite the big one.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bite_the_big_one. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
