Champing at the bit

[MichikoS]

"...it's hard to imagine the Democratic power structure, chomping at the bit to retake the Presidency, declaring Obama the Democratic choice in a general election;"



+ Champing at the bit
If someone is eager or anxious to do something, they are said to be champing at the bit, (not chomping at the bit, nor chomping on the bit).

CHAMPING: Repetitious, strong opening and closing action of the mouth which produces sounds when the teeth hit together. Champing in swine may be a threat signal, but also is performed by boars during courtship and mating. Definition from Hurnik et al., 1995.

- The Encyclopedia of Farm Animal Behavior http://www.liru.asft.ttu.edu/EFAB/letter.asp?Letter=C

champ
v. tr. - To bite or chew upon noisily.
v. intr. - To work the jaws and teeth vigorously.
Idiom: - champ at the bit
To show impatience at being held back or delayed.

- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Courtesy of Peter Langston, www.langston.com/English

[badMike]

6. champ at the bit, to betray impatience, as to begin some action.

Also, chomp.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=champ%20at%20the%20bit

More:

The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus (2004), in particular, has a usage note on chomp, champ (p. 140), which recognizes the chomp at the bit wording as an American variant but claims that it's slightly less common in contemporary print sources than the champ variant. Pretty much the same discussion appears in Garner's Modern American Usage (2003), also from Oxford University Press.

Dictionaries are, for good reason, slow to recognize changes.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002018.html

More:

Q. Is there a preference for "champing at the bit," or should a person "chomp at the bit"?

A. The earlier verb was champ, making its written debut in the 16th century and meaning "to bite, to gnash, to grind with one's teeth." It's still in use, though nowadays it appears almost exclusively in the phrase "champ at the bit." The verb chomp made its appearance in the late 16th century, and was clearly an alteration of "champ," sharing almost all of champ's meanings.

"Champ at the bit" was used before "chomp at the bit" and it has enjoyed a nice, long reign. However, popular usage has been swinging towards "chomp at the bit" since it first began being used in the phrase, sometime around the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, our evidence indicates that "chomping at the bit" is used in recent print sources more frequently than "champ at the bit," so we can't possibly ignore it.

http://www.word.com/collegiate/archives/2006/09/from_the_mail_s_11.html

(Bolded sections highlighted by me.)