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Reader question: Please explain "humble pie" in this sentence: "She was a resourceful hostess and good cook, but humble pie was not on the menu". My comments: Not to be taken literally, this is just another way of saying that she, the hostess is not a humble person. She doesn't do, as they say, humble pie. She doesn't serve it and she doesn't eat it. She doesn't eat humble pie, not her own, nor anyone else's. Humble pie, you see, evolved from umble pie or numble pie, according to language historians. The umbles or numbles referred to the innards or internal organs of animals including the heart, the liver, the kidney and the guts and intestines. Since it was mostly the poor and humble people - humble was pronounced "umble" by many low-class and uneducated folks - who ate umble pies to save a penny, it is only logical that after a while, eating one's humble pie became synonymous with taking a humiliating lesson. Usually in the form of eating one's humble pie, the phrase is mainly used when one has to admit a mistake and apologize for it. Americans say "eat crow", after being humbled by a similar experience. Show your humility, in other words. Learn a humble lesson. Learn to be humble and not be so outrageously arrogant in future. In our example, the unnamed hostess obviously doesn't, or didn't, as it were, do any of that. In other words, she was probably very proud and not at all modest in how she conducted herself. | 
