3 February 2021
To eat humble pie is to be obliged to apologize for some wrong, to be humiliated. But it is not just a figurative expression, humble pie is a real dish as well, and the figurative expression was originally a play on words, a combination of the real food and the word humble, meaning deferential, submissive, or lowly.
The adjective humble comes into English from the Old French humble, which in turn is from the Latin humilus, meaning low or lowly. The adjective is borrowed into English by the thirteenth century. From a Kentish sermon, c. 1275:
Nu lordinges ure lord god almichti. þat hwylem in one stede. and ine one time flesliche makede of watere wyn; yet habbeþ manitime maked of watere wyn; gostliche. wanne þurch his grace maked of þo euele manne good man. of þe orgeilus umble. of þe lechur chaste. of the niþinge large. and of alle oþre folies; so ha maket of the watere wyn. þis his si signefiance of þe miracle.
(Now gentlemen, our lord God almighty, that while in one place and at one time physically made wine out of water, yet he has many times spiritually made wine out of water, when through his grace he makes of the evil man a good man, of the arrogant humble, of the lecher chaste, of the miser generous, and of all other sins, so he makes win out of the water. This is the significance of the miracle.)
The food sense of humble has its origin in the Latin lumbus, meaning loin, as in a loin of beef or pork. In Old French, this became nombles (the < l > becoming an < n > through what linguists call dissimilation). And in the Norman dialect, there was a semantic shift, and nombles came to mean not the loin, but rather the offal, the organ meat.
This sense was borrowed into English in the thirteenth century from Anglo-Norman French. An early use appears in the romance Sir Tristrem, written sometime before 1300 (the earliest manuscript version is from c. 1330) in a passage describing the dressing of an animal, probably a deer, that had been killed in a hunt:
The spaude was the first brede;
The erber dight he yare.
To the stifles he yede
And even ato hem schare;
He right al the rede,
The wombe oway he bare,
The noubles he gaf to mede.(The shoulder was the first cut of meat;
He readily prepared the first stomach.
To the stifles he went
And cut them in two evenly;
He set out the fourth stomach,
The bowels he bore away,
The noubles he gave as a reward.)
Numbles was quickly reanalyzed and became umbles—a numbles became an umbles. And in some English dialects an < h > was inserted at the beginning to become humbles. Thus we have Robert Greene’s play The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, which contains this exchange between two women:
Lacy. What haue you fit for breakefast? we haue hied and posted all this night to Freiingfield.
Margret. Butter and cheese, and humbls of a Deere,
Such as poore Keepers haue within their Lodge.
So, humble pie is literally a meat pie made with organ meat, like kidney pie. The literal sense appears in the 8 July 1663 entry in Samuel Pepys’s Diary:
Going in, I stepped to Sir W. Batten and there stayed and talked with him, my Lady being in the country, and sent for some lobsters; and Mrs. Turner came in and did bring us an Umble-pie hot out of her oven, extraordinary good, and afterward some spirits of her making (in which she hath great judgment), very good; and so home, merry with this night's refreshment.
Pepys’s manuscript reads humble-by.
But the figurative sense doesn’t appear until the early nineteenth century. As mentioned, that’s a play on words, combining the offal sense with that of the low state. The earliest use of the figurative sense that I have found is from Henry Whitfield’s 1804 novel A Picture from Life: or, the History of Emma Tankerville and Sir Henry Moreton:
The conversation taking a political turn, Mr. Snug argued on the folly of the Cussicans menaces. He hoped ere long the main villain would be obliged to eat humble pie.
Sources:
Greene, Robert. The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay. London: Edward White, 1594, sig. H4.
Hall, Joseph, ed. “Kentish Sermons.” Selections from Early Middle English, 1130–1250. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, 217–18. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 471. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Lupack, Alan, ed. “Sir Tristrem, Part I.” Lancelot of the Laik and Sir Tristrem. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994, lines 485–91. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck MS).
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. noumbles, n., humble, adj.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. humble pie, n., umbles, n., numbles, n., humble, n.2., humble, adj.
Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 6 of 10. Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1971, 8 July 1663, 221.
Whitfield, Henry. A Picture from Life: or, the History of Emma Tankerville and Sir Henry Moreton, vol. 2 of 2. London: S. Highley, 1804, 156. HathiTrust Digital Archive.