Numble pie is mentioned in Thomas Love Peacock’s Maid Marian and Crochet Castle (Robin Hood). Turner came in, and did bring us an umble pie hot out of her oven, extraordinary good. Its value as an historical document is vast. Although the diary is lighthearted and amusing, it is considered an “inadvertent masterpiece” and Pepys the greatest diarist in the English language. It describes scenes of everyday life, and also chronicles the the Great London Fire.

1 The diary of Samuel Pepys, which he began on January 1, 1660, records the everyday life of a seventeenth-century London man who was engaged in business and who came in contact with all sorts of people. Steak and kidney pie is still around, after all and according to Samuel Pepys, a well-to-do and upwardly mobile city dweller who dined with such notables as Sir William Penn, an umble pie was quite good. One way of cooking umbles was to bake them into a pie. The prevalent theory was that people heard someone saying “a numbles” and thought they were saying “an umbles.” So the word numble became umble. Not every one of the time seems to have agreed.Īt some point, the N got dropped.

The numbles were reserved for the huntsmen and his companions, or for the servants, while the venison itself was served to the more wealthy household to which he sold the deer. The numbles were eaten as early as the 1400’s. This is also where we the get the word lumbar from. It came from the Old French nombles which came from the Latin lumbulus meaning “a little loin.” The word for loin was lumbus. Removing the liver, heart, entrails, and other organs from a deer and cooking them to eat used to be a common practice, and these innards were called numbles. We just have to eat one at a time and enjoy each one.Now, if you were forced to eat the entrails of a deer, that would for sure be humiliating, wouldn’t it? Well, it would be today, but there was a time when “waste not, want not” was taken more seriously, and the eating of organ meats or offal was more common than it is today, although it still survives. Well, Rob, I don't think eating all those pies is a punishment. In the past, rich people might have considered eating an 'umbles pie' as a punishment. Well, some people say it might have come from 'umbles', which is an old word for animal organs like kidneys, intestines, etc. We still have all these pies, which are very tasty actually. So, I can't eat ten pies in a few minutes after all. He said he could finish the work much quicker than anybody else in the office. The factory owner had to eat humble pie after a lot of customers complained about his product. Let's hear some examples of how it's used. 'To eat humble pie' is today's expression in The English We Speak. That person then has to act in an apologetic way. Yes, in English, when we say someone has to 'eat humble pie', we mean they have to admit they can't do something they boasted about. I have to admit that I was wrong when I said I could eat all those pies. Humble pie? I won't have room for any type of pie. If you can't finish these, you're going to have to eat humble pie. Right, let me try some of these… (eating pies). I can't imagine ten of these huge pies fitting inside your skinny body.ĭon't worry, they will – I'll eat them all and very quickly. How can you be so sure you are going to win?īut you're so thin. I'm going to be the new champion! I'm so sure of it – no one's going to beat me, I'm the best! I'm glad you've come to watch me train for the pie-eating competition. Will he be able to eat ten pies in a few minutes? Listen to the programme to find out. He has asked Feifei to bet on his victory. Rob is training for a pie-eating competition. English at Work (intermediate) Business.Tim's Pronunciation Workshop (intermediate) Pronunciation.The Sounds of English (basic+) Pronunciation.

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Humble pie eat it