Question

Bite the Dust to die; to fall in defeat; to fail to succeed

Accepted Answer

The spy bit the dust at the end of the book. This cliché, which was often heard in early Western movies, is actually more than 2,000 years old and comes from a line in Homer's Iliad. It describes many dying warriors in the Trojan War falling to the earth and "biting the dust." If people fall with their faces in the dirt, you can think of them getting dust in their mouths. The idiom became popular in English in the mid-1800s.

Idiom	Bite the Dust
Example	The spy bit the dust at the end of the book.
Meaning	to die; to fall in defeat; to fail to succeed
Origin	This cliché, which was often heard in early Western movies, is actually more than 2,000 years old and comes from a line in Homer's Iliad. It describes many dying warriors in the Trojan War falling to the earth and "biting the dust." If people fall with their faces in the dirt, you can think of them getting dust in their mouths. The idiom became popular in English in the mid-1800s.

Dust Fall Bite Spy Bit End Book Die