Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) a sum of money.

1591		Greene Second Part of Conny-Catching in Grosart (1881–3) X 99: The Priggar [...] perceiued he was bitten of all the bite in his bung.
1592		Greene Defence of Conny-Catching 6: Some that would not stoope a farthing at cards, would venter all the byte in their boung at dice.

(b) (UK Und.) that which is cadged; a good bite, a complaisant victim.

1723		C. Walker Authentick Memoirs of Sally Salisbury 120: Oh Madame, says the Conscious Bite, Dey be de ver fine Gold.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 245: Fleecing each other is an every-day practice—every one looks put upon his fellow as a bite.
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 61: gonniff: Nix my schickster; do you see anything green about me? cos I doesn’t! its no bite my switcher, do you stag that? – walker!
1848		Sinks of London Laid Open 51: To all of which the bite, or rather the bitten, answered, with good-humoured smiles.
1886		M.E. Braddon Mohawks III 149: O, it was a bite of the most diabolical nature.
1903		J. Furphy Such is Life 177: Prospecting for a bite of grass.
1906		Sun. Times (Perth) 11 Mar. 1/1: The sixpenny cadger is becoming a big circumstance on the Perth landscape [...] his constant bites are producing a swelling on the public lug.
1936		T. O’Reilly Tiger of the Legion 35: ‘But, shure, there’s a merry little twinkle in the eye of ye that should get a bite and a copper out of most folk!’ .
1938		D. Runyon ‘Little Miss Marker’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 302: He will hold still for a bite, if the bite is not too savage.
1941		K. Tennant Battlers 34: Talking and smoking and comparing ‘handouts’ and ‘bites’ and good towns and ‘hungry tracks’.
1986		R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 56: Well heeled: A ‘flash bastard’ who’s got more money than sense. However, he might be good for a ‘bite’ (loan).

(c) a cadger.

1732		Progress of a Rake 40: Some young Nobles / (Tho’ they were Gamesters, Bites, and Bubbles).
1751		Smollett Peregrine Pickle (1964) 691: From which circumstance it was conjectured that Peregrine was a bite from the beginning, who had found credit on account of his effrontery and appearance, and imposed himself upon the town as a young gentleman of fortune.
1787		S. Jenys in Dodsley III 169: The fool would fain be thought a bite [F&H].

(d) (US) a share of profits.

1901		‘Hugh McHugh’ Down the Line 22: A bundle for a bite — you’re on a cold plate.
1953		A.J. Liebling Honest Rainmaker (1991) 22: The percentage [in faro] is almost nil [...] unlike the pari-mutuels, with their fearful sixteen-per-cent bite.

(e) an attempt to obtain a loan.

1851		R.S. Surtees Young Tom Hall 7: Hall [...] had had the offer of many other ‘bites’ beside Sloper’s — for escaping which he was more indebted to his own acuteness than to the candour of the would-be biters.
1919		W.H. Downing Digger Dialects 11: bite (n. or vb.) — (1) A borrowing, to borrow; (2) an attempt to borrow.
1924		(con. WWI) A.G. Pretty Gloss. of Sl. [...] in the A.I.F. 1921–1924 (rev. t/s) n.p.: bite.(1) A borrowing, to borrow. (2) An attempt to borrow.
1940		W. Winchell 22 Feb. [synd. col.] The idea of publicity is to build the public up for a sale. Maybe partnership in a war. Maybe a bite for a few million francs.
1953		A.J. Liebling Honest Rainmaker (1991) 30: [He was] styled Mike the Bite because he was such an easy fellow to promote for a loan.
1953		K. Tennant Joyful Condemned 231: It was all a big standover. There were farmers being stood over by banks, butchers bullied by carcase butchers, bakers driven to suicide by flour millers; all one big bite.

(f) (Aus.) an act of begging.

1973

(con. 1930s) F. Huelin ‘Keep Moving’ 7: I approached the shabby hotel slowly. this was my first ‘bite’, my initiation into a role which had to be played.

(g) (N.Z.) a miserly authority figure.

1933

N. Scanlan Tides of Youth 233: He’s a bit of a bite.

(h) (US) the price, the cost, a bill, esp. when the item is expensive.

1944		E. Wilson 9 May [synd. col.] The $50-an-hour bite is just Antoine’s consultation charge.
1952		I, Mobster 58: I had the money – I could have had myself one of those fancy places up on Seventh Avenue without even feeling the bite.
1963		M. Braly Shake Him Till He Rattles (1964) 119: Even though the bite at the door had gone up to two dollars, the place filled up early.
1965		A. James America’s Homosexual Underground 85: Five to ten dollars is the usual bite just to enter the drab establishments.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 87: The bite is two for fifty slats.
1970		in P.R. Runkel Law Unto Themselves 258: The bite for this was fifteen bucks.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 50: Who’s selling the Hog? And what’s the bite?
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 285: ‘The bite was fifty g’s’.

(i) a bribe.

1978		P. Hamill Dirty Laundry 106: There was always la mordida, the true governor of Mexico, the bite, the bribe.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 235: It can all be fixed with a bribe. La mordida they call it. The death bite.

(a) a cheat, a confidence trickster.

c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: bite c. a Rogue, Sharper or Cheat.
1707		Cibber Double Gallant I i: saun.: I never mind Accounts; I don’t understand ’em. sir sol.: Pray, Sir, what is’t you do understand? saun.: Bite, Bam, and the best of the Lay, old Boy.
1707		Humours of a Coffee-House 25 June 1: [dramatis personae] Hazard, a Gamester, Bite, a Sharper.
1718		Proceedings Old Bailey 9 July 7/1: One of the Officers of the Court deposed, That she was the oldest Bite and oldest Whore we have, that she had ruin’d several that he knew.
1719		A. Smith Lives of Most Notorious Highway-men, etc. (1926) 202: Bite, a rogue, sharper or cheat; also a woman’s privities.
1724		Proceedings Old Bailey Dec. 6/1: He thought the Prisoner was as great a Thief, a Bite, and a Cheat, as any in England.
1734		C. Johnson Hist. of Highwaymen &c. 130: Your Wife’s a Bite, Sir.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1742		Fielding Miss Lucy in Works (1766) 277: Is this wench an idiot, or a bite? Marry me, with a pox!
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1791		Bon Ton Mag. Mar. 7/2: Ah, you Irish bite, I have got six and threepence by you now!
c.1800		‘The British Spy’ in Coll. of English Ballads 86: I sat down and began to write / These verses to show the world’s all a bite, / Honesty’s all out of fashion.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1822		W. Scott Peveril of the Peak IV 64: The architect’s a bite, and the plan’s a bubble.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1887		in G.D. Atkin House Scraps 118: A most terrible knave and a bite, / Who cheated his mother, / His sister, and brother.

(b) a hoax, a confidence trick, a fraud.

1705–07		N. Ward Hudibras Redivivus II:5 18: A Bite more knavish than the Oak, / That has so many Hundreds broke.
1714		T. Lucas Lives of the Gamesters (1930) 197: Whereupon his lordship supposing he was not in a capacity of paying 500 pounds in case he had lost, cry’d out, A bite, a bite.
1724		Defoe Roxana (1982) 183: Thus his Project of coming to-Bed to me, was a Bite upon himself, while he intended it for a Bite upon me.
1725		New Canting Dict. n.p.: bite [...] Of all the Bites we have heard of in Modern Times, that of a late Criminal, Holloway; I think it was, deserves to be remembered, for what is related of his harden’d Boldness and Villainy, even the very last Article of his Life.
1734		Proceedings Old Bailey 24 Apr. 104/2: He soon returned, and said it was no Bite, for he had met his Chap, who had shewn him the Top of the Tweezer-case, and chinked the rest of the Things in his Pocket.
1749		Smollett (trans.) Adventures of Gil Blas I 11: I was as much affected with this bite as I have since been with misfortunes of far greater consequence.
1751		Smollett Peregrine Pickle (1964) 369: A damn’d bite, by G-d!
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Biting was once esteemed a kind of wit, similar to the humbug. An instance of it is given in the Spectator: A man under sentence of death having sold his body to a surgeon rather below the market price, on receiving the money, cried, A bite! I am to be hanged in chains.
1792		H.H. Brackenridge Modern Chivalry (1937) Pt I Vol. I Bk I 6: The jockeys were of the opinion [...] that the horse was what they call a bite, and that under the appearance of leanness and stiffness, was concealed some hidden quality of swiftness.
1793		Sporting Mag. Oct. III 43/2: Moses [...] complaining bitterly of what he calls a Christian bite.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) I 236: He boasted, but it prov’d a bite.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1815		A Merry Song Called Love in a Barn 6: Mark how this fair maid she did lay / a crafty country bite.
1817		W. Scott Rob Roy (1883) 136: It’s all a bam, ma’am – all a bamboozle and a bite.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London 552: ‘What have we here?—somebody has dropped a prize.’ ‘It is mine, Sir,’ said an old woman [...] ‘A bite,’ said Tom. ‘I dropp’d it from my pocket, Sir, just now.’.
1836		W.H. Smith ‘The Thieves’s Chaunt’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 120: But I never in liquors took delight, / For liquors I think is all a bite.
1853		R.S. Surtees Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour 149: It was not often that Jack got a 'bite' at my lord, which, perhaps, made him think it the more incumbent on him not to miss an opportunity.
1860		Sat. Rev. (London) 14 Apr. 475/2: That form of practical joking, which in the time of ‘The Spectator,’ was known as a bite [...] in the popular slang of the day, is designated ‘a sell’ [F&H].
1883		Daily News 18 Apr. 5/4: Lord Randolph Churchill, we fear, has been making Mr. Gladstone the victim of what, in the slang of Addison’s time, would have been called a bite, and what in the slang of our own time is called a ‘sell’ [F&H].
1929		C.G. Gordon Crooks of the Und. 124: He, I think, was the greatest exponent of the art of ‘tap’ and ‘bite’. [Ibid.] 125: The distinction between the two verbs – to tap and to bite – is this: Whereas a person ‘tapped’ must part with his dough generously and freely [...] the victim of the ‘bite’ had no intention of parting with any of his superfluous cash.