I asked this one a while ago without much success…Does anyone know the origin of this expression, and how it came to mean…something totally different?
its the name of a fishing boat.
Aside from Peach’s…hmmm fanciful interpretation, any other ‘educated’ guess from the Teeming Millions, or shall it once again sink into oblivion and remain forever one of life’s mysteries?
I always thought it was a shortening of the expression “bite my ass.”
Well, here’s what I turned up on this:
“Bite me” was common in southern California in the 1950s. It was sometimes expanded to “Bite my bodini”.
Bodini, slang for penis, comes from the Italian wird “bodino,” blood sausage.
ASD: thanks for the educated guess…
Starbury: Wow…I had no idea the expression was that old. That it originated in SoCal doesn’t exactly surprise me, on the other hand…
Do you have a site/cite?
I got that information from a few different threads in the alt.usage.english newsgroup. I know UseNet isn’t always the most reliable source of factual information, but the newsgroups on languages are usually pretty solid.
I’ll check today to see if I can come up with anything more solid.
I’m guessing it’s like this: “Bite me” might derive from “Bite my bodini”, which means “Suck my dick.” The implication is that the you are superior to the person you are saying it to. Since most males would find the act of fellating another man degrading, you are implying that you are not only superior to the other, but that you have the power (should you decide to use it) to force the other person to perform a degrading act.
Interesting. Never heard of the term “bodini” in that context. Although, Muhammad Ali’s right-hand man for many hears was Drew “Bundini” Brown, and every time Ali mentioned his name it sounded just like “Bodini.”