To "bite the bullet" is to “accept the inevitable impending hardship and endure the resulting pain with fortitude”.
Phrases.org.uk. Retrieved on 2019-03-20. The phrase was first recorded by

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ...

in his 1891 novel ''

The Light that Failed ''The Light That Failed'' is the first novel by the Nobel Prize-winning English author Rudyard Kipling, first published in ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'' in January 1891. Most of the novel is set in London, but many important events through ...

''. It has been suggested that it is derived historically from the practice of having a patient clench a bullet in their teeth as a way to cope with the pain of a surgical procedure without anesthetic, though evidence for biting a bullet rather than a leather strap during surgery is sparse, although Harriett Tubman related having once assisted in a Civil War amputation in which the patient was given a bullet to bite down on.Samuel Hopkins Adams's ''Grandfather Stories'', pg 277. It has been speculated to have evolved from the British expression "to bite the cartridge", which dates to the

Indian Rebellion of 1857 The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...

, but the phrase "chew a bullet", with a similar meaning, dates to at least 1796. The phrase was used in a literal sense in the 1975 film ''Bite the Bullet''. One of the characters has a broken, aching tooth and cannot get treatment. He uses a shell casing to cover the exposed nerve; the slug is removed from the bullet, the cap was hit to expend that charge, and the casing was cut down to allow it to sit level with his other teeth.

References

{{The Light that Failed Philosophical phrases Metaphors referring to objects Metaphors referring to war and violence Consequentialism Dilemmas Anesthesia American slang 1890s neologisms Quotations from literature Quotations from philosophy Rudyard Kipling

See also

References