Bite the Dust

The image of a defeated warrior falling face-first into the dirt is ancient, and several classical sources compete for credit. Homer's Iliad describes slain fighters with dust between their teeth, though whether that image really counts as the origin of this specific English idiom is debated. A biblical source is also proposed, Psalm 72:9 describes enemies who "lick the dust." The earliest confirmed English-language citation is from 1578, with the exact modern wording appearing in Tobias Smollett's 1750 novel The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane. The phrase was popularised much later by 1930s American Western films, showing cowboys or their opponents thrown from horses onto the dusty ground, but it was already centuries old by then.