historical-changehistoryidiom-meaningidioms
I just learnt about the expression "to bite the bullet", meaning Accept the inevitable impending hardship and endure the resulting pain with fortitude (as seen in its article in phrases.org).
I have read about its origin, but it looks a bit unclear or disputed, since different historical reasons appear in its Wikipedia article.
Is there any authoritative or more relevant source to get to know its origin? Does it always mean "show courage" or it depends on the region?
The phrase means:
similar in type
I can't remember exactly what words he used but it was something along those lines.
I was thinking of doing a dinner party along the lines of that meal I cooked for Annie and Dave.
There is some discussion of its origins here, noting:
Probably from the meaning of "line" defined as sense #15b in the Oxford Engl. Dict.:
"fig. Plan of construction, of action, or procedure: now chiefly in phr. 'on (such and such) lines.'"
"In all very uncultivated countries . . . there are but obscure lines of any form of government" .
"He had reorganized the constitution on the most strictly conservative lines".
To say that "The plot was something along the lines of a murder and a police man" means that the plot line of the novel was something similar to a murder with a policeman. Or, if you're designing a sculpture and have an idea in mind, you can sketch it out and say you want something along those lines--that is, you want "something like this".
Figurative Meaning
According to the website Words and Phrases from the Past the expression means
It matches the third example
Look here, you naturalist, and I'll put a wrinkle on your horn [I'll give you a hint]. Yonder hangs a magnificent bunch of fruit that I very much desire to possess
A second variation I found was "Well, that's a new wrinkle in my horn"
We love to get comments about the column. If the readers have heard the expressions that we share they tell us so. But if they haven't, we are sometimes answered with, "Well, that's a new wrinkle in my horn."
Let some respectable citizens, gen'lemen, come and take my last dying confession. It'll put a wrinkle or two in their horns, I'll warrant them !
i.e It will surprise/shock them = something new.
Source: Bittersweet
Online Etymology Dictionary reports,
wrinkle (n.)[...]that of "idea, device, notion" (especially a new one) is from 1817.
Why Wrinkles?
From a book entitled Ellis's Husbandry: Abridged and Methodized (1772) there is the following excerpt which confirms @josh61 answer that farmers read the wrinkles on cow horns in order to guess their age, just as many do with the rings on a tree trunk.
This is a surer sign than the wrinkles in a cow's horn, by which we guess at their age; because they seldom have more than one wrinkle or circle, till five years old, and that sooner or later, according to the time of her calving; but an oak, ash, fir, hazel, and most other woods, shew these marks at three or four years old, when they are about the bigness of one's thumb
Here is an excerpt from the Australian Enquiry Book (1897) by Mrs Lance Rawson
To tell the Age of a Cow
At two years of age you will find a wrinkle at the base of the cow's horns, but it is >not fully developed till she turns three. When five years old another wrinkle will form, and after five she will get a new one each year of her life.
Every time you learn something new your brain wrinkles
There is the myth that the brain forms new wrinkles every time new information is stored. Many believe that the more wrinkles the human brain has, the more intelligent that person is. It's only recently that science has proven false that conviction, but it is one that still persists even today, like a popular old wive's tale.
Q. What do brain wrinkles have to do with how smart you are?
A. A lot of wrinkles seems to have more to do with what makes humans smarter than lower animals than with what might have made Einstein smarter than you. [...] Human intelligence appears to be related to the branching of brain cells and the formation of complex links between them, not the shape of the platform where the links take place.
I manage to unearth a very early reference that confirmed people believed every new wrinkle represented a new understanding; this folklore predates Etymonline's estimation by a sizeable ninety-three years, and is found in Jonathan Swift's tale The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders, written in 1720
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/31/science/q-a-brain-folds.html
Earlier Example of the Idiom
The earliest written example that combined the words new, wrinkle, and horn is in The Medico-chirurgical Review, 1830, New York
Note the variation, to add a wrinkle to the horn (of knowledge)
Best Answer
From the book Anesthesia in Cosmetic Surgery, edited by Barry Friedberg (Publisher: Cambridge University Press):
An evidence possibly showing the origin of the phrase is the tooth marks found on a 200-year-old musket ball on display at The Dr. Samuel D. Harris National Museum of Dentistry:
Here is another evidence, chewed bullets from the Battle of Antietam. These bullets, which Civil War soldiers bit during surgery conducted without anesthesia, are known as pain bullets also:
On the other hand, I found some sources that are against the idea of pain bullets. They think that people wouldn't put easily swallowed bullets in their mouth during surgeries and bite marks on the bullets are mostly from animals and especially from hogs.
Here is a plausible explanation from an antique medical, surgical & dental artifacts resource site:
Ciwilwarscholars.com and civilwarvirtualmuseum.org are among the sources that are against the pain bullet idea. For example, in one of the sources, it is mentioned that both chloroform and ether were available for administration before surgery. The first method of anesthesia, nitrite oxide, was introduced in 1844; ether as an anesthetic was first used by Horace Wells (an American dentist) in 1846; and the Scottish obstetrician James Young Simpson first used the anesthetic qualities of chloroform in 1847. But there is an evidence that there are chewed bullets with human bite marks that are older than the discovery of anesthesia.
Although there are some plausible explanations against the theory, most authoritative sources favor it. So we can conclude that there is strong evidence from authoritative sources that pain bullets were used during surgeries; and it is the origin of the phrase "bite the bullet".
Bonus readings: