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Bitten

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Imposed upon, let in, made to suffer loss. “I was terribly bitten in that affair.” I suffered great loss. To bite is to cheat or suffer retaliation. Thus, Pope says, “The rogue was bit,” he intended to cheat, but was himself taken in. “The biter bit” is the moral of Æsop’s fable called The Viper and the File; and Goldsmith’s mad dog, which, “for some private ends, went mad and bit a man,” but the biter was bit, for “The man recovered of the bite, the dog it was that died.”

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Bistonians
Bit
Bit (of a horse)
Bit
Bite
Bite
Bitelas
Bites and Bams
Biting Remark (A)
Bitt
Bitten
Bitter End (The)
Bitter as Gall
Bittock
Biz
Black
Black
Black as a Crow (or as a raven);
Black as a Newgate Knocker
Black in the Face
Black is White