Bite

How to spell bite

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bite

What does bite mean?

1. verbTo cut into or grip something with the teeth.
2. nounA piece taken with the teeth, or a wound made by teeth.

Bite in a sentence

• verb

  The puppy will bite anything left on the floor.

• noun

  She took a quick bite of the sandwich before the meeting.

• verb

  Mosquitoes tend to bite exposed skin at dusk.

• noun

  The spider bite on his arm swelled overnight.

Where does bite come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Bite comes straight from the Old English verb bītan, meaning 'to pierce or cut into something with the teeth', and it has stayed close to that core sense for well over a thousand years. The word belongs to a large Germanic family: it is cousin to Dutch bijten and German beissen, all descending from a Proto-Germanic root bitan. That same ancient root also gave English several relatives you might not expect, including 'bitter' (literally something that bites the tongue) and 'beetle' (the 'biting' insect). The spelling is reassuringly regular, with the silent final 'e' lengthening the vowel so it rhymes with 'kite'. The chief trap is not the letters but the ear: bite is a homophone of the computing term 'byte' and the nautical word 'bight', so the listener must rely on meaning to choose the right spelling.

How the word is built

• bite (single root, from Old English bītan 'to cut into with the teeth'); no prefix or suffix

Words that sound like bite

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• byte: A unit of digital information, typically made up of eight bits.