Learn English – Origin of “bite your tongue” as a response

etymology

When someone says something unpleasant or rude, often the reply is "Bite your tongue!". But where did this come from? I can find a number of sources explaining that to bite one's tongue is to hold it between the teeth, preventing speech, and thus is a metaphor for not speaking; this makes sense, as I've seen "I bit my tongue" to mean "I didn't say anything". However, I can't find much about the usage as a response to something already said. Is it along the lines of "You should have bit your tongue instead of saying that"? Are the two usages actually related or just similar?

For clarification: usage A of the phrase "bite your tongue" is a synonym for "hold your tongue", whereas the usage I'm interested in is used similarly to "Wash out your mouth with soap" (though that's usually used for swear words, whereas this can be used for any negatively-perceived statement, like saying something bad about a public figure who is well respected, or implying that a woman is over a certain age)

Best Answer

Here's but my position was delicate, and I bit my tongue and was silent from 1893, so it's obviously been around a while (but I held my tongue has always been far more common).

And here's he stopped and bit back his anger from 1945, showing how "bite" has long been used metaphorically in the sense of "restrain" (what's being bitten needn't in fact be the tongue).

But when people respond to a cutting remark with "Bite your tongue!" I would say they're simply introducing a creative variation on an established idiom. The sense there is "You should punish your tongue for saying such a thing!".

It's somewhat similar to "Wash your mouth out! {with soap and water}", used to mean something like "Your mouth must be unclean to have said such a thing!"

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