biting point

biting point (plural biting points)

1. (automotive) The point where the clutch engages when the pedal is released.

   Synonym: bite point

   • 2005, Driving Standards Agency, Driving: The Essential Skills, page 68:

     Tight clutch control is needed, so keep the clutch pedal just above the biting point.

   • 2021, Silent Freedom:

     To stop rolling backward on a hill, he instructed, depress both the clutch and brake pedals, put the car into gear, release the hand brake, and then lift the foot off the clutch until the biting point is found.

   • 2022, Anne-Danièle Gazin, Multimodal Interaction on the Move, page 351:

     Finding the biting point is not easy: even for more advanced drivers it requires a moment of particular attention to bring the engine to the biting point in order to drive off smoothly.

2. (more generally) The precise position at which a control mechanism as been moved just enough to cause a device to operate.
   • 1903 September, R, “A Talk on Set Screws”, in Modern Machinery, volume 14, number 3, page 81:

     The slipping set screw is a source of much trouble when due to lack of proper biting point.

   • 2016, Vanessa Hawes, Lauren Redhead, Music and/as Process, page 112:

     The 'biting point' needs to be found when the keys are depressed past the point of escapement, a characteristic that varies widely in distance and reliability across different pianos.

   • 2020, Kenn Gordon, Altered Perceptions:

     My heart rate came down, my breath steady and gentle, pull deeper on the trigger, almost to its biting point.

3. (figuratively) The point or set of circumstances when a particular action can begin or a critical transition can occur.
   • 2011, Charles Kofi Fekpe, Diamonds in Eden, page 118:

     And here is the biting point: If you understand clearly “what” God has been doing in your life to date and “where” He has been leading your feet (and I don't mean physical feet) to date, you will be in the most critical position to […]

   • 2015, Nick Coleman, Pillow Man, page 109:

     Once, twice, three times she tried – but there was no biting point. There was only a vague, achy sense of evasion as her retinas strained to accomplish her mind's desire, and failed.

   • 2016, James S. Williams, Encounters with Godard: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics, page 135:

     By inserting Bach as it were horizontally within Dvořák to record a cinematic event and so reach the vital biting point (which, as we have said, is also the moment of human love and its recognition), the film moves, however, beyond the purely abstract or conceptual (the logic of reversibility) and arrives at something far more direct and immediately affective (leading Marie in a voiceover shortly after the zoom to talk of experiencing the light like a glowing fire).

   • 2017, Richard Neville, Radio Taiso: The Exercise of 10 Million Japanese:

     That will be the 'biting' point if you like. Even just a LITTLE stretch from this point is the sweetspot!

   • 2022, Julie Norton, Heather Buchanan, The Routledge Handbook of Materials Development for Language Teaching, page 479:

     For it to go further than the classroom, most of all a commissioning publisher must be convinced and take ownership of the big idea: and it could be at this point it will start to be pulled back and forwards by the publisher's search for the 'biting point' between innovation and conservatism suggested above.

4. The level of aggravation that causes someone or something to lash out or bite.
   • 1901, Jean Gill, True Colours: Box set of six books:

     Sometimes the Princess would appear with the lead and take one of the others out, often Maisie, and I would hate whoever had gone in my place, filled to biting-point with envy that built up and built up in the long wait imagining someone else's pleasure.

   • 1909 March 10, S. S. Cameron, “Diseases of Farm Animals”, in The Journal of the Department of Agriculture of Victoria, volume 7, page 158:

     Unless they are attacked or unless they are intercepted in their progress towards their hole they apparently prefer to make away from, rather than to attack, man or animals; and it may be assumed that the quiet movements of grazing animals do not excite them to the biting point.

   • 1912 April, Charles A.L. Reed, “The Farce of Medical Ethics”, in Pearson's Magazine, volume 27, number 4, page 466:

     This final prod from the press has brought us precisely to the biting point, and we are really much obliged to the prodder.

   • 2020, Nasar Meer, Whiteness and Nationalism, page 98:

     These strategies are premised on the notion of maintaining inequalities at the biting point of tolerable discomfort for marginalised raclialised communities (Breen 2018, 51).

5. The position of the jaw where the upper and lower teeth meet during a bite
   • 1962, Meyer M. Silverman, Occlusion in Prosthodontics and in the Natural Dentition, page 76:

     The use of the resultant biting-point can be incorporated with any technique of building complete dentures.

   • 1993, Felicity Anne Huntingford, Behavioural Ecology of Fishes, page 123:

     The muscle combinations that must be active to generate the biting force differ depending on the size of the fish, size of the prey, position of the biting point and direction of the biting force.

   • 2013, David J. Chivers, Bernard A. Wood, Alan Bilsborough, Food Acquisition and Processing in Primates, page 382:

     If the biting point is located lateral to the long axis of the corpus — that is in canine and first premolar biting — the bite force rotataes the teeth outward.

   • 2018, Enrico Marani, Ciska Heida, Head and Neck: Morphology, Models and Function, page 200:

     The largest strains during biting are present in the midface and of course at the biting point.

6. The location where something is bitten.
   • 1900, “Are Acquired Characteristics transmitted?”, in Dietetic and Hygienic Gazette, volume 15, page 283:

     After a few generations of such treatment it is noticed that in the puppies' tails there is indicated the exact spot at which they should be bitten off. The cartilage in the tail is merely rudimentary beyond the biting point.

   • 2014, Gary J Byrnes, Thriller Box Set:

     There is a sudden sharp pain. It's biting me. I try to scream but my throat merely coughs up bile. I struggle to keep it down. Then a wave of warmth spreads out from the biting point. Up my arm and into the rest of me.

   • 2022, Heinz Mehlhorn, Jorg Heukelbach, Infectious Tropical Diseases and One Health in Latin America, page 53:

     During the bite, the host blood reaches the flea's midgut, gets contaminated with bacilli from the biofilm, and due to the blockage, is returned to the biting point in the host's skin.

7. The point of a blade or similar item where it begins to bite or penetrate.
   • 2016, Beth Trissel, The Traitor's Legacy Series:

     Jeremiah jumped aside and just cleared the biting point.

   • 2016, Robert Fabbri, The Furies of Rome:

     Files of legionaries from the outsides of each cohort raced to its middle, gradually building up, evenly, so that protrusions of men appeared, lessening until at the tip there was the primus pilus of the cohort, acting as the biting point of the wedge.

   • 2020, Rev. W. C. Green, The Story of Egil Skallagrimsson:

     Breastplates ringing crashed, Burning helmfire flashed, Biting point of glaive Bloody wound did grave.

• “biting point”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “biting point”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “biting point” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.