Humble

[Dr. Goodword]

• humble •

Pronunciation: hêm-bêl • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Meek, modest, deferential, submissive, lacking any arrogance or pride, a humble man of faith. 2. Of low quality or rank, unpretentious, as a humble abode or humble origins.

Notes: Most speakers pronounce the initial H on today's Good Word, though not in honor. The rule explaining the different pronunciations of a history versus an historical is that in unaccented syllables the H is dropped. However, in today's word the H appears in an accented syllable, so it should be pronounced. Still, if you are from the US South, you may pronounce today's word umble. It's OK if you do. The noun that fits this adjective is humility.

In Play: You won't find the recipe for humble pie, though you will hear this expression frequently, as in: "If I'm late for work again, I'll have to eat all the humble pie that my boss can dish out." Of course, you can fake humility, but as Golda Meir once famously put it: "Don't be so humble; you're not that great." Today's adjective may be used as a verb, too: "The whole world was humbled by Nelson Mandela's capacity for forgiveness."

Word History: Today's Good Word is Old French humble, pure and simple, the descendant of Latin humilis "lowly, humble", literally "on the ground," from humus "ground, earth". The phrase "to eat humble pie" is actually a misperception of umble pie (1640s), pie made from umbles "edible inner parts of an animal", especially deer and hogs, considered at the time a humiliating, lower class food. Since the H of humble wasn't pronounced at the time, it took over the job of umble. Umbles was in Middle English numbles "offal". The initial N was lost through assimilation into the preceding article: a numble (pie) becoming an umble (pie), following the pattern of a narange (Arabic) becoming an orange and a napron becoming an apron. Have you noticed that a napkin is just a small (n)apron. (We would have to eat humble pie if we forgot to thank Carolyn Mickelson for recommending today's Good Word.)

[LukeJavan8]

A nearby church has a
'thrift store' which they call "Humble Jumble".

[saparris]

Re the "Notes" section, I don't pronounce "historical" with a silent h, and I don't say "an historical event." Nor have I ever ordered an hamburger or an hot dog.

Am I alone in these quirks?

[David Myer]

Certainly not with hot hamburgers, nor even when choosing a hotel. But when I write a history of words, it will be an historic event for sure.

Right. Off to cook dinner - steak and numble pudding.

[LukeJavan8]

I use the "H" sound in all of them as well.
Never heard it silent around this neck
of the woods. I don't know of a case where
the 'h' is silent.

[Perry Lassiter]

A mild disputation occasionally breaks out around here about humble or historical. But hamburger and hot dog always have their H's pronounced. If he means he never actually ate a hamburger, he has a real treat awaiting him.

[saparris]

I've had my share of hamburgers and hot dogs. I was mildly disputing the use of "an historical."

I know people say it, but it goes against the a/an rule regarding articles that precede consonant/vowel sounds. And it sounds hifalutin to boot.

[LukeJavan8]

I think it has something to do with H being
a consonant, but what is called, "an aspirate H".
It's a consonant, but not really there. Sort
of like a zombie.

[Philip Hudson]

Uuriah Heep in Dickens' novel "David Copperfield" was 'umble. His entire family was 'umble. I have always pronounced and heard humble pronounced with the h.

I wrote a book titled, "My Humility And How I Achieved It, or You Too Can Be As Humble As I".

Umbles are quite another thing. If one were humble enough he might eat umbles. I’m sure Mother Heep cooked them daily for Uriah - to keep him ‘umble. Here we mean eating lungs, stomachs, etc. of animals. Some English people eat kidneys and the Scots, who in their native state ate whatever they could find, still eat the stomach of a sheep with all the other umbles stuffed in it along with, what else, oatmeal. They even write poems about it.

As for putting the article an before a word starting with an h when the h is not pronounced, that’s the way my mother taught me. “It took me an hour to read a history of the articles a and an”.

[LukeJavan8]

I had 'agis' is Scotland, quite an experience.

[misterdoe]

Uriah Heep? Was he friends with Jethro Tull and Lynyrd Skynyrd?

[David Myer]

Lynyrd Skynrd was into rock; Jethro Tull was into soil; Uriah Heep was into crawling in both. Incidentally, isn't obsequity a far better word that obsequiousness?

David

[misterdoe]

Funny how I've always turned up my nose at the thought of eating haggis ("lungs, stomachs, etc."), though I've been known to put away some chitlins (spelling it the way it's pronounced). Haven't had it in years, though.

[Philip Hudson]

Chitlins, formally spelled Chitterlings is the most humble of umbles. It is pig guts.

[Perry Lassiter]

We can probably blame this on the Greeks. As I recall, instead of an H, they place a ( over an opening vowel to aspirate it, and a ) over such a vowel to not pronounce the H sound. If you place the hook ę on the top instead of the bottom, you get the idea. The word Hellenic in Greek has no H, just the diacritical mark on top of the eta.