To bite the bullet

   To "bite the bullet" is to endure a painful or otherwise unpleasant situation that is seen as unavoidable.  The phrase was first recorded by Rudyard Kipling in his 1891 novel The Light that Failed.   It is often stated that it is derived historically from the practice of having a patient clench a bullet in his or her teeth as a way to cope with the pain of a surgical procedure without anesthetic. But evidence for biting a bullet rather than a leather strap during surgery is sparse.  It os more likely to have evolved from the British empire expression "to bite the cartridge", which dates to the Indian Rebellion of 1857. In this version of the etymology, the idea of tolerating necessary hardship refers to the British wish that the sepoys would ignore any small presence of animal fat in their paper cartridges.