We often hear about all sorts of regrets. People often lament for something that cannot be corrected. People came up with an expression for this kind of emotion. Today in the area of our attention there is a stable phrase “bite your elbows”, its meaning and examples of use.
Origin
It is known that many phraseological units come from folk life and everyday observation. No need to graduate from a university in order to fully realize the inaccessibility of the elbow when you want to bite it. Perhaps that is why history did not preserve the specific origin of the phraseology “bite elbows”. Its source is self-evident.
Native speakers should not have any tangible problems with the meaning. The meaning of the expression is that a person either desperately regrets something, and then the speech revolution is used in the present tense, or moral torment only predicts it. As a rule, the second happens more often. This is the meaning of the expression “bite your elbows”, the meaning of phraseology is disclosed.
The inexorability of time
Popular wisdom is deep, although the bearer of worldly knowledge may not be aware of his mind. That is, people rarely understand what is hidden behind the minted phraseological formulations. It would seem that a simple thing is the inability to return the perfect act or spoken word back. The “bite your elbows” speech all the time reminds a person that he should live as meaningfully and think about the consequences of his choice all the time, because if the latter is wrong, then you can regret it in the future (and maybe in the present).
Emotional component
Of course, a certain fatality of choice lies in the saying. But there is another point of view, why it is the elbow that appears in the saying, and not, say, the ear or nose. After all, one cannot bite oneself for these parts of the body. This is only a hypothesis, so do not judge strictly.
A person in a state of despair is capable of the impossible, so he can even bite his elbow from an excess of feelings. One trouble - this will not fix anything.
As for the examples, there are as many of them as you want, but most often the expression “bite your elbows” can be found in a conversation between two women discussing a man. One, of course, does not like him, and the other is already married, but warns her friend: “Look, if you miss him, then you will regret it all your life, you will bite your elbows!” It is difficult to say how much, in percentage terms, such prophecies fall right on target, but you have to hear this quite often.