“I had to eat crow” Where does it come from and what does it mean?
From Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable pub. Cassell:
“In North American usage to be forced to do something humiliating or distasteful. The expression is said to derive from an incident during an armistice of the Anglo-American War of 1812-14. A New Englander unwittingly crossed the British lines while hunting and brought down a crow. An unarmed British officer heard the shot and resolved to punish the offender … and forced him at the point of (his own) gun to take a bite out of the crow. When the officer returned the gun, the American in his turn covered the soldier and compelled him to eat the remainder of the crow.”
BTW, we don’t “eat crow” over here, we eat humble pie, where “humble” is a corruption of “umble”, which in past times was a word for the entrails of a deer. The gentry ate the best parts of venison meat, leaving the heart, liver etc. for the peasants.
Hope this helps, Tito, and welcome aboard the SDMB.
For some reason, I find this particular story from Brewer’s less than fully credible, although a War of 1812 origin is consistent with the appearance of the phrase in the language.
As for the image behind the expression, the Word Maven says this about eating crow.
In the world of etymology, Brewer while useful, is taken with a grain of salt. Very unreliable.
The Maven is about as up-to-date as you can get, as much of the site draws on Lighters works, which they publish/own/commissioned.
Michael Quinions wonderful site http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/eatcrow.htm talkes about the origin of that fanciful story about the War of 1812. He also talks about *humble pie." And “eating dirt.”
The best part of the article on “numble/humble pie” is that it is similar to “orange,” a word which came from “norange” and morphed into “an organge.” This is called metanalysis.
It was certainly “a numble pie” in the beginning, and morphed into “an umble pie.”
…l.and, if I bothered to read before posting, I would not have spelled “organge” as “organge.”:o