If it misfired, you had a вЂњfizzle.вЂќ So writing about вЂњ the great gun-control fizzleвЂќ after the Newtown shooting is more freighted than writing that a politicianвЂ™s prospects have fizzled. For early muzzle-loading flintlock rifles, gunpowder was poured down the barrel, secured with a piece of cloth tamped into place by a ramrod and then ignited by a spark struck from the flint. But its modern meaning is more closely associated with guns. Fizzle: In the late Middle Ages, вЂњfizzleвЂќ was an onomatopoeic word used when someone surreptitiously passed gas.And politicians are often urged to bite the bullet and compromise - suggesting that coming together to pass legislation is as painful as amputation while fully sentient. His 1891 novel вЂњThe Light That FailedвЂќ includes this line: вЂњBite on the bullet, old man, and donвЂ™t let them think youвЂ™re afraid.вЂќ These days, people are more likely to bite the bullet if they have to accept an unpleasant truth. British writer Rudyard Kipling is thought to have been the first to use the expression figuratively. Bite the bullet: Meaning to power through something unpleasant, the term comes from the practice of providing wounded soldiers a bullet to clench their teeth on while they underwent surgery without anesthetic.Consider this list, presented as bullet points - which are themselves so conventional, so central to the typography of mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations, that you can forget what their shape represents. Indeed, the way we Americans casually, often unthinkingly, incorporate gun metaphors into our everyday slang says a lot about how deeply embedded guns are in our culture and our politics, and how difficult it is to control or extract them. Sometimes itвЂ™s the offhand remark thatвЂ™s the most telling.

Jones is the author of вЂњ William Clark and the Shaping of the WestвЂќ and вЂњ Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation.вЂќ

Define biting the bullet