4/1/2023 0 Comments To eat a humble pieThese recipes were written for solid fuel fired ranges where the temperature could not be adjusted other by the position in the oven. 2 hours at 175C (or 350F) or less depending on type of oven. The similarity of the sound of the words, and the fact that umble pie was often eaten by those of humble situation could easily have been the reason for 'eat humble pie' to have come to have its current idiomatic meaning. Fill the pastry lined Pie tin with meat/fruit mixture and add the lid making an air hole and using pastry offcuts to decorate. (Incidentally, if you feel like girding your loins and aren't sure exactly where they are, the OED coyly describes them as 'the parts of the body that should covered with clothing'). The adjective humble, meaning 'of lowly rank' or 'having a low estimate of oneself' derived separately from umbles, which derives from Latin and Old French words for loins. This changing of the boundaries between words is called metanalysis and is commonplace in English. 'A numble pie' could easily have become an umble pie', in the same way that 'a napron' became 'an apron' and 'an ewt' became 'a newt'. It is possible that it was the pies that caused the move from numbles to umbles. "Mrs Turner came in and did bring us an Umble-pie hot out of her oven, extraordinarily good." "I having some venison given me a day or two ago, and so I had a shoulder roasted, another baked, and the umbles baked in a pie, and all very well done." Samuel Pepys makes many references to such pies in his diary for example, on 5th July 1662: Umbles were used as an ingredient in pies, although the first record of 'umble pie' in print is as late as the 17th century. There are many references to both words in Old English and Middle English texts from 1330 onward. By the 15th century this had migrated to umbles, although the words co-existed for some time. of animals, especially of deer - what we now call offal or lights. In the 14th century, the numbles (or noumbles, nomblys, noubles) was the name given to the heart, liver, entrails etc. The unpalatability of crow, boiled or otherwise, seems clear, but what about humble pie? In the USA, since the mid 19th century, anyone who had occasion to 'eat his words' by humiliatingly recanting something would be said to 'eat crow' (previously 'eat boiled crow'). Umbles, aprons and newts what have they in common? What's the origin of the phrase 'Eat humble pie'? Food and drink What's the meaning of the phrase 'Eat humble pie'?Īct submissively and apologetically, especially in admitting an error. Farrar’s Julian Home (1859): “He made up for the dirt they had been eating by the splendour of his entertainment. The analogy to eating dirt is self-evident. This explanation appeared in 1830 in Vocabulary of East Anglia by Robert Forby. The source of humble pie is less far-fetched it is a corruption of (or pun on) umble-pie, “umbles” being dialect for the heart, liver, and entrails of the deer, which were fed to the hunt’s beaters and other servants while the lord and his guests ate the choice venison. The American obeyed, but when the officer returned his gun, he took his revenge and made the Briton eat the rest of the bird. The officer then pointed the gun and said that as punishment for trespassing the American must take a bite out of the crow. He was caught by an unarmed British officer who, by complimenting him on his fine shooting, persuaded him to hand over his gun. If you eat humble pie, you speak or behave in a way that tells people that you admit you were wrong about something. A story cited by Charles Funk and published in the Atlanta Constitution in 1888 claims that toward the end of the War of 1812, during a temporary truce, an American went hunting and by accident crossed behind the British lines, where he shot a crow. The origin of the first is not known, although it is generally acknowledged that the meat of a crow tastes terrible. All these expressions date from the early nineteenth century, eating crow from America and eating humble pie and dirt from Britain. To acknowledge an embarrassing error and humiliatingly abase oneself.
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