humble [ME] A word that goes back to Latin humilis ‘low, lowly, base’, also found in humility [ME], which was formed from humus ‘earth’, the source of our garden humus [L18th]. English adopted humble from French in the Middle Ages. Before the mid 19th century there was no humility involved in eating humble pie. Humble pie was more correctly umble pie, made from the ‘umbles’ or innards of a deer or other animal. People considered offal to be inferior food, so began to pun on the similar-sounding humble. The first recorded example of to eat humble pie, ‘to make a humble apology and accept humiliation’, is from a collection of the dialect of East Anglia, published in 1830.