Chrysti The Wordsmith: Bite the Dust

Greetings and welcome to Christie the wordsmith in cowboy parlance the rider that gets thrown from his horse chews gravel eats grass kisses the ground or bites the dust of all these lively Western expressions. The latter is perhaps the most enduring the tost writer who bites the dust lands face first on the ground and ends up with a mouth full of dirt. The notion provides a metaphor to describe a person or enterprise that comes to an ignoble end. The verbal formula is also a crude synonym for to die. It's tempting to tie this gritty colorful phrase etymologically to the front tier of the American West where bronc riding and dust biting are stuff of legend but not so fast pilgrims. The source of this expression may lie in a land far from the North American continent. When English poet Alexander Pope translated Homer's Iliad in 1715 he wrote of a Greek warrior who dies in battle then quote falls and bites the bloody sand

in 1870 American poet William Cullen Bryant who also translated Homer's work wrote of said Warriors falling to the earth to bite the dust. So this expression that sounds so wild in western may in fact be a direct translation of Homer the Greek poet whose great works the Iliad and The Odyssey dated to the eighth century B.C.. I'm Christie the wordsmith. Good day verb of course Christie the wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.