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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)

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etymonline dates it back to the 1590s, but no known source. – tylerharms Dec 14 '12 at 18:57
@tylerharms The date suggests Shakespeare. – coleopterist Dec 14 '12 at 19:12
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I always knew to say "bite your tongue" to someone to keep what they said from coming true - as if to utter something bad (as in a prediction) was to give life to it or to tempt the fates. I cannot find any source that verifies this usage though. – Kristina Lopez Dec 14 '12 at 19:21
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@coleopterist: I was originally thinking it was more as in, "Do you bite your tongue at us, sir?" "I do my bite my tongue, sir." "And do you quarrel, sir?" But, it looks like Henry VI Part 2 has the more common usage. "So York must sit and wait and bite his tongue/while his own lands are bargained for and sold." – tylerharms Dec 14 '12 at 19:31
@tylerharms: I think you're thinking of "Do you bite your thumb at me sir?" - Romeo and Juliet. – Colin Fine Dec 15 '12 at 0:35
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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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Yeah, it's the latter part I'm wondering about; whether it's (as you postulate) simply meaning "punish yourself" or whether it's related to the former sense of the phrase – Yamikuronue Dec 14 '12 at 18:58
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@Yamikuronue: Well, as I said, I think it's a creative variation on an existing idiom, so in that sense it's certainly "related". But I'm sure many people who say "Wash your mouth out with soap and water" see that as much in terms of being a metaphorical "punishment" for the "bad" mouth as a metaphorical "cleansing", so it's not straightforward to separate out exactly what things like this actually "mean" at that level. The contexts where they're used is really the only thing that establishes intended (as opposed to literal) meaning. – FumbleFingers Dec 14 '12 at 19:04

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