in den sauren Apfel beißen

Literally: To bite into the sour apple

Example: “Ich muss in den sauren Apfel beißen und den Zahnarzt anrufen.” — I have to bite the bullet and call the dentist.

English equivalent: To bite the bullet

Origin: Two competing images have been proposed for the phrase's underlying logic, neither definitively confirmed. One traces it to primitive battlefield medicine, where a wounded soldier facing surgery with no anesthetic was given something to clench between his teeth to bite down on through the pain — sometimes, according to the story, a sour apple specifically. A second, plainer theory points to genuine agricultural hardship: during famine or a failed harvest, people sometimes had no choice but to eat unripe or spoiled apples rather than go hungry, the sour taste standing in for any unpleasant necessity accepted only because the alternative was worse. What is documented with certainty is Martin Luther's use of the phrase in the early 1500s, in a letter to the ailing Elector Johann of Saxony, telling him that he would have "to eat a little wormwood and bite into a sour apple" — an early written use that helped cement the phrase in the language regardless of which image originally inspired it.