Dictionary of Phrase and Fable—B

Bitten

Imposed upon, let in, made to suffer loss. “I was terribly bitten in that affair.” I suffered great loss. To bite is to cheat or suffer retaliation. Thus, Pope says, “The rogue was bit,” he intended to cheat, but was himself taken in. “The biter bit” is the moral of Æsop's fable called The Viper and the File; and Goldsmith's mad dog, which, “for some private ends, went mad and bit a man,” but the biter was bit, for “The man recovered of the bite, the dog it was that died.”

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
Bitter End
Bitt
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