Word.ws English Dictionary

eating humble pie

eating humble pie is the present participle and gerund 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 eating humble pie

What is eating humble pie the present participle and gerund of?
Eating humble pie is the present participle and gerund of eat humble pie.

Words near eating humble pie in the dictionary

  1. eating from the palm of someone's hand
  2. eating habit
  3. eating habits
  4. eating house
  5. eating houses
  6. eating humble pie
  7. eating in
  8. eating into
  9. eating irons
  10. eating it
  11. eating knife

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: eating 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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