Humble pie

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page has been transwikied to Wiktionary.

The article has content that may be useful and possibly more appropriate at Wikipedia's sister project, Wiktionary. Therefore the article can be found at either Wiktionary:Transwiki:Humble pie or Wiktionary:Humble pie. It should no longer appear in CAT:MtW and should not be re-added there.
The final disposition of this article on Wikipedia has not yet been determined. It may be redirected, nominated for deletion, or expanded if possible.

For the hard rock band of the same name, see Humble Pie (band).

To eat humble pie, in common usage, is to apologize and face humiliation for a serious error.

[edit] Derivation

The expression derives from umble pie, which was a pie filled with liver, heart and other offal, especially of cow but often deer. These parts were known as umbles, and since they were considered inferior food, in medieval times the pie was often served to lower-class people.

Although "umbles" and the modern word "humble" are etymologically unrelated, each word has appeared both with and without the initial "h" after the Middle Ages until the 19th century. The similarity of the two words was probably a significant factor in the evolution of "eat humble pie" as an idiom.