Who likes to bite the big one?
There's a classic Saturday Night Live sketch which features the Conehead family participating in the popular game show "Family Feud." One of the questions is "Name something people like to bite," and Connie Conehead matches the most popular survey response when she intones "The Big One!"
Now Laraine Newman's delivery of the line is hilarious, but I have to confess that I've never gotten the actual joke. I've always understood the expression "to bite the big one" to mean "to die," and I can't find that it has any other commonly-understood meaning (apart from a highly-downvoted definition on Urban Dictionary).
So...explain the joke to me, please. People don't like to die, generally speaking, so why would a large fraction of a random survey say that they do?
All I can suppose is that it's supposed to be humorously random, but, well, it still doesn't make any sense. It's akin to the most popular answer to "What do people like to stab?" being "Their own eyeballs!" or to "What do people like to lose?" being "All their money!"
Best Answer
You are correct that "to bite the big one" is an idiom referring to the death of the one who does the biting. There is no other interpretation I'm familiar with, either.
So...explain the joke to me, please. People don't like to die, generally speaking, so why would a large fraction of a random survey say that they do?
Logically, a large part of a survey group probably wouldn't give this answer, of course. But keep in mind this is an SNL skit - SNL is not generally known for being logical in their skits.
The joke here is two-fold:
Connie Conehead, being an alien, gave an illogical answer to the question because she misunderstood human culture and/or didn't really know what the expression meant. I think you understood why this part was funny.
Unexpectedly, she got the number one answer, which is funny precisely because we don't expect it. You, the viewing audience, wouldn't expect her answer to be a good one, but then it was, so we laugh at the absurdity of that fact.
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What does the phrase bite the big one mean?
Bite-the-big-one definition (idiomatic) To die. verb. (idiomatic)To break down; to be impossible to repair or not worth repairing.Where does the saying bite the big one come from?
Origin of to Bite the Big OneThe origins of this phrase are unclear, but one possibility is that it comes from the phrase bite the bullet, where biting a bullet offers a chance of survival but biting the big one, whatever that might be, means almost certain death.How do you use bite the big one in a sentence?
To be remarkably bad, unpleasant, disappointing, or upsetting. Well, that movie bit the big one. I wish I could get my money back! Yeah, I heard that class bites the big one.What does that bites mean?
Definition of that bites \u2014used to express disappointment or disgust "They canceled the concert." "Man, that bites!"I like my lover to BITE my... | Family Feud
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