Um·ble pie A pie made of umbles. See To eat humble pie, under Humble.

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 Eat v. t. [imp. Ate Obsolescent & Colloq. Eat p. p. Eaten Obs. or Colloq. Eat (ĕt); p. pr. & vb. n. Eating.]
 1. To chew and swallow as food; to devour; -- said especially of food not liquid; as, to eat bread. “To eat grass as oxen.”
    They . . . ate the sacrifices of the dead.   --Ps. cvi. 28.
    The lean . . . did eat up the first seven fat kine.   --Gen. xli. 20.
    The lion had not eaten the carcass.   --1 Kings xiii. 28.
 With stories told of many a feat,
 How fairy Mab the junkets eat.   --Milton.
 The island princes overbold
 Have eat our substance.   --Tennyson.
    His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages.   --Thackeray.
 2. To corrode, as metal, by rust; to consume the flesh, as a cancer; to waste or wear away; to destroy gradually; to cause to disappear.
 To eat humble pie. See under Humble.
 To eat of (partitive use). “Eat of the bread that can not waste.” --Keble.
 To eat one's words, to retract what one has said. (See the Citation under Blurt.)
 To eat out, to consume completely. “Eat out the heart and comfort of it.”  --Tillotson.
 To eat the wind out of a vessel Naut., to gain slowly to windward of her.
 Syn: -- To consume; devour; gnaw; corrode.


 Hum·ble a. [Compar. Humbler superl. Humblest ]
 1. Near the ground; not high or lofty.
    Thy humble nest built on the ground.   --Cowley.
 2. Not pretentious or magnificent; unpretending; unassuming; modest; as, a humble cottage.  Used to describe objects.
 3. Thinking lowly of one's self; claiming little for one's self; not proud, arrogant, or assuming; thinking one's self ill-deserving or unworthy, when judged by the demands of God; lowly; weak; modest.  Used to describe people.
    God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.   --Jas. iv. 6.
    She should be humble who would please.   --Prior.
    Without a humble imitation of the divine Author of our . . . religion we can never hope to be a happy nation.   --Washington.
 Humble plant Bot., a species of sensitive plant, of the genus Mimosa (Mimosa sensitiva).
 To eat humble pie, to endure mortification; to submit or apologize abjectly; to yield passively to insult or humiliation; -- a phrase derived from a pie made of the entrails or humbles of a deer, which was formerly served to servants and retainers at a hunting feast. See Humbles. --Halliwell. --Thackeray.