Bite the Bullet

To bite the bullet means to do something that you do not want to do, but that you have to do.  For example, you might be afraid of the dentist, but your tooth is hurting.  You should just bite the bullet and go to the dentist. 

There is a commonly held belief that the phrase comes from war time medicine.  There were no effective painkillers or anesthetics on the battlefield, so soldiers would have to bite on something hard to deal with the pain.  There seems to be evidence for this.  Sometimes soldiers would bite a lead bullet, wooden stick or piece of leather.  However, this is not where the phrase comes from.

The truth is that bite the bullet did come from soldiers but it wasn’t for medical reasons.  Soldiers would bite on a bullet when they were being flogged by a cat of nine tails.  So, the soldiers bit a bullet to help deal with the pain of their punishment.  As a matter of fact, the first mention of biting the bullet (1788) was in a definition of “nightingale” (type of bird).  A nightingale was also a soldier who cried, screamed, or complained about being flogged.  It was a point of honor for soldiers to remain quiet when receiving their punishment.

See Also:  Cat Got Your Tongue?, Over a Barrel, Biting off more than you can chew

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Reference:
https://wordhistories.net/2017/07/24/bite-the-bullet-origin/
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bite-the-bullet.html