BITING HANDS

If someone offers you a good deal, you might bite their hand off, but you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.

 If you bite someone’s hand off, you eagerly accept what they are offering. This is reminiscent of an animal being so eager to snatch food out of someone’s hand that they accidentally bite their hand off.

 e.g. “After taking time off work to look after her stepdad and help her mum get back on her feet following his death, Katherine had Fridays free so decided to help at the hospital. ‘They nearly bit my hand off,’ she says.”


 To bite the hand that feeds you, however, is to hurt or be ungrateful to someone who has been kind to you.

 This expression apparently dates from the late 18th century and was first recorded in Edmund Burke’s Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770) [1]. (You can find a copy of this here, although it’s not really a page-turner. 😉)

 e.g. “To make sustained criticism of class while employed at these institutions is to bite the hand that feeds you.”

[1] “bite” in The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by Knowles, Elizabeth. Oxford University Press, 2005.

Photo credit: Matt Miller