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Reader question: Please explain this sentence, particularly “eat the crow”: “Only time will tell, and I’ll gladly eat the crow if proven wrong.” My comments: Here, the speaker is being a good sport, vowing to keep a promise or pay the price if he/she fails. The price to pay is to eat the crow, metaphorically speaking of course. The crow is a bird whose meat is believed to be unsavory and hard to swallow. Hence, when two people are making a bet on something, they’ll make the loser eat the crow as punishment. A queer form of punishment, to be sure. “Eat the crow” is an American idiom which, if you search the Internet, leads you to many theories regarding its origin. However, a simple as well as probable, or at least plausible theory points to two farmers doing exactly what I’ve described, making a bet on something and forcing the loser to eat the crow as punishment. In our example, the speaker apparently makes a statement and, being a good sport, is happy to admit his/her mistake if proven wrong. Now, the question is, if the crow’s meat is anything but delicious, why will the speaker “gladly” eat it? That means the speaker won’t mind if they lose bet because they are actually happy with the outcome – a scenario they’re happy with, even though they personally don’t see much chance of it happening. For example, the other day, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the expense of other writers and poets including the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, who, as does Dylan has many fans in China. We can certainly imagine a Bob Dylan fan making the following statement: | 
