humble

to act very humble when one is shown to be wrong. I think I'm right, but if I'm wrong, I'll eat humble pie. You think you're so smart. I hope you have to eat humble pie.

Cliché a phrase introducing the speaker's opinion. "In my humble opinion," began Fred, arrogantly, "I have achieved what no one else ever could." Bob: What are we going to do about the poor condition of the house next door? Bill: In my humble opinion, we will mind our own business.

to publicly admit you were wrong about something Charles had to eat crow and tell them they were right all along.

to be forced to admit that you are wrong and to say you are sorry The producers of the advert had to eat humble pie and apologize for misrepresenting the facts.

Also, eat dirt or humble pie . Be forced to admit a humiliating mistake, as in When the reporter got the facts all wrong, his editor made him eat crow. The first term's origin has been lost, although a story relates that it involved a War of 1812 encounter in which a British officer made an American soldier eat part of a crow he had shot in British territory. Whether or not it is true, the fact remains that crow meat tastes terrible. The two variants originated in Britain. Dirt obviously tastes bad. And humble pie alludes to a pie made from umbles, a deer's undesirable innards (heart, liver, entrails). [Early 1800s] Also see eat one's words.

To be forced to accept a humiliating defeat.

To be forced to apologize abjectly or admit one's faults in humiliating circumstances.

A self-deprecating way to refer to one's home. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the source: the insufferable Mr. Collins refers to his patroness Lady Catherine de Burgh with “The garden in which stands my humble abode is separated only by a lane from Rosings Park, her ladyship's residence'' and “But she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends to drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies.''

A meek admission of a mistake. The “humble pie” that we eat when we make a misjudgment or outright error was originally “umble” pie made from the intestines of other less appetizing animal parts. Servants and other lower-class people ate them, as opposed to better cuts. “Umble” became “humble” over the years until eating that pie came to mean expressing a very meek mea culpa. A similar phrase is “eat crow,” the bird being as unpalatable a dish as one's own words.