Word.ws English Dictionary

bitten the dust

bitten the dust is the past participle 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 bitten the dust

What is bitten the dust the past participle of?
Bitten the dust is the past participle of bite the dust.

Words near bitten the dust in the dictionary

  1. bitten someone's head off
  2. bitten the big one
  3. bitten the biscuit
  4. bitten the bullet
  5. bitten the curb
  6. bitten the dust
  7. bitten the hand that fed one
  8. Bittenbender
  9. Bittenbenders
  10. Bittenbinder
  11. Bittenbinders

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bitten 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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