What does the idiom ‘Bite the bullet’ mean?

Correct — D. Bite the bullet means to accept something painful or unwelcome and go through with it — to face a hard situation with courage.

The idiom is about endurance, not escape. You bite down because the pain is coming either way and cannot be dodged.

Option (d) states that in plain words. With no carrier sentence here, the phrase has to be judged on its settled sense alone.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Enjoy a delicious meal — A bullet is not food, and the idiom carries no sense of eating. This option only works if the phrase is read word by word, which is the one thing an idiom never allows.
• (b)
  Give someone a piece of advice — The idiom describes what one person endures, not something handed to somebody else. No sense of counsel or warning attaches to it.
• (c)
  Avoid confrontation — Avoid confrontation is the reverse of the phrase. Biting the bullet means walking into the unpleasant thing rather than sidestepping it, which makes this the most tempting wrong answer.

Idioms are learnt whole, but a bare idiom item can still be narrowed before memory is trusted.

Ask what the physical picture implies. Biting down hard on something is what a person does while enduring pain, not while enjoying, advising or escaping.

Then ask which option is the plain opposite of the phrase. One is usually planted, because a candidate who half-remembers the idiom as 'something to do with hardship' can fall either way. Here that plant is 'avoid confrontation'.

Key facts

• Bite the bullet means to endure a painful or unpleasant situation with courage.
• It often carries the sense of finally doing an unwelcome thing that has been put off.
• In this item the opposite meaning is planted as option (c), 'avoid confrontation'.

Common traps

• Choosing 'avoid confrontation' from a vague memory that the idiom involves trouble.
• Reading the words literally and picking the option about a meal.

No directly related past PYQ was found.