Nelly Min

Reader's question:?Should this complicity be proven Congress will have to bite the bullet and move toward impeachment. There is no halfway house.

Could you explain “to bite the bullet”?

My comments:

To bite the bullet is to endure a painful or otherwise unpleasant situation that is seen as unavoidable. It may be derived from the practice of having a patient clench a bullet in his or her teeth as a way to cope with the extreme pain of surgical procedures without anesthesia. The theory goes that patients undergoing surgery would be given a stick of wood or a pad of leather to bite on in order to concentrate their attention away from the pain and also to protect against biting their own tongues. A bullet is said to have been an impromptu battlefield alternative.

So when you face some task or decision that you hate to make, you can say, “I just have to bite the bullet and do it.”

This can apply to everyday situations like cleaning your house, or more serious situations such as filing your tax returns or buying health insurance.

Related stories:

What's the catch?

Marriage material

Nuts and bolts

Across the board

Be in someone’s shoes

In that vein

The devil you know…

Right out of the gate

Leap-frog

Up the ante

loose ends

Nose-bleed section

Off the rails

Keeping up with the Jones's

Benefits package

Closed-door talk

March Madness

On-again,off-again

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

Nelly Min?is a journalist at the China Daily website.