Word.ws English Dictionary

biting the dust

biting the dust is the present participle and gerund of bite the dust.

Meaning of bite the dust

Verb

bite the dust (third-person singular simple present bites the dust, present participle biting the dust, simple past bit the dust, past participle bitten the dust)

  1. (euphemistic, idiomatic) To die.
    • Ulysses killed Demoptolemus, Telemachus Euryades, Eumæus Elatus, while the stockman killed Pisander. These all bit the dust, and as the others drew back into a corner Ulysses and his men rushed forward and regained their spears by drawing them from the bodies of the dead1900, Samuel Butler, transl. The Odyssey, Book XXII., page 293
  2. (idiomatic) To quit, or fail.
    • My old backpack finally bit the dust the other day.

Questions about biting the dust

What is biting the dust the present participle and gerund of?
Biting the dust is the present participle and gerund of bite the dust.

Words near biting the dust in the dictionary

  1. biting stonecrop
  2. biting the big one
  3. biting the biscuit
  4. biting the bullet
  5. biting the curb
  6. biting the dust
  7. biting the hand that feeds one
  8. bitingly
  9. bitingness
  10. bitings
  11. bitistatin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: biting the dust (page history and authors); bite the dust (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.

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