Word.ws English Dictionary

ate humble pie

ate humble pie is the simple past of eat humble pie.

Meaning of eat humble pie

Verb

eat humble pie (third-person singular simple present eats humble pie, present participle eating humble pie, simple past ate humble pie, past participle eaten humble pie)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To admit one's faults; to make a humiliating apology.
    • They were good-natured enough out of their cups, and ate their humble-pie with very good appetites at a reconciliation dinner which Colonel W. had with the 44th, and where he was as perfectly stupid and correct as Prince Prettyman need be. Hang him!1857–1858, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, chapter XII, in The Virginians. A Tale of the Last Century, volume I, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1858, →OCLC

Questions about ate humble pie

What is ate humble pie the simple past of?
Ate humble pie is the simple past of eat humble pie.

Words near ate humble pie in the dictionary

  1. ate cunt
  2. ate dirt
  3. ate down
  4. ate for two
  5. ate from the palm of someone's hand
  6. ate humble pie
  7. ate in
  8. ate into
  9. ate it
  10. ate lead
  11. ate like a bird

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ate humble pie (page history and authors); eat humble pie (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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