Other forms: bit, bites, biting, bitten
To bite is to cut into something with your teeth. Bite an apple, a dog bite, take a bite.
The past is bit and the participle bitten. As a noun, a bite is both the act and a small amount of food — a bite to eat. Figuratively, to bite means to take effect painfully: the sanctions began to bite. Note bite the bullet, meaning to face something unpleasant; bite off more than you can chew; and once bitten, twice shy.
1verbbiteTo cut into something with your teeth.
“Be careful; that dog might bite.”
2nounactThe act, or a small amount of food.
“They stopped for a bite at roughly nine o'clock.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
bite is a cutting with teeth.
Old English bitan goes back to a root meaning to split. Bit, bitter and beetle come from the same splitting — a beetle is literally a biter.
Middle English
biten
English, today
bite
From Middle English biten. From Middle English biten, from Old English bītan (“bite”), from Proto-West Germanic bītan, from Proto-Germanic bītaną (“bite”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰeyd- (“split”). Cognates include stq biete (“bite”), West Frisian bite (“bite”), Dutch bijten (“bite”), German Low German bieten (“bite”), German beißen, beissen (“bite”), Danish bide (“bite”), Swedish bita (“bite”), Norwegian Bokmål bite (“bite”), Norwegian Nynorsk bita (“bite”), Faroese and Icelandic bíta (“bite”), Gothic 𐌱𐌴𐌹𐍄𐌰𐌽 (“bite”), Latin findō (“split”), Ancient Greek φείδομαι, Sanskrit भिद् (“break”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA