Tommy Metz III

Ooh.

Did I send you my notes by accident? That's crazy. This has been, no, that is not, that is not quite right. But you are right that it involves food. Would you like to know? Can I just go ahead and tell you real quick? Please tell me. In the 14th century, the numbles, N-U-M-B-L-E-S, was the name given to gross food.

For the most part, heart, liver, entrails of animals, especially of deer, what we would now call awful, O-F-F-A-L, not awful, but it was awful. It was considered a lower class food. By the 15th century, the term had changed to just umble. Instead of N-U-M-B-L-E, it was now U-M-B-L-E, dropping the N. How did this happen? Well, some word smarties think that pies might be the reason.

At that time, pies were extremely popular and affordable to eat, and a lot of people didn't have money. And if you were to eat or serve a pie made of numbles, N-U-M-B-L-E, you would call it a numble pie. thus dropping the N in pronunciation. A numble pie. A numble pie. Exactly right.

And because humble and humble sound so alike, it was actually used as a pun of sorts in the UK by 1830, meaning to eat lower class food or to do something resulting from past regret was to eat humble pie. But then everyone forgot the gross stuff used to be called numbles or umbles in the first place. And so humble pie just became an idiom when no one remembered it was originally a punchline.

So everyone's walking around just saying these words, not realizing that we used to be smart and it was like a play on words. And now we're just saying this stupid words together, humble pie, which doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't mean anything.

Yeah, but it used to. Humble or numble. It was a numble pie. What is America's version? Here's your second question, Pete. Oh. What is America's version other than eating your words or humble pie? What do we say? It's not used very much at all. Oh, eat ass. So close. Show me eat ass. No, that's a different. That's family ass. No, the America's version is eat crow. To eat your own words.

To eat crow. Do you know why it was called that?

Extremely poor people. No, it just used to eat boiled crows. Like they would find crows were very plentiful. And so like sassy, you've seen Disney cartoons, crows and Siamese cats are notably sassy. So they were very easy to catch. And so you would boil them and you would call eating boiled crow or eating crow was humbled experience because crows are nasty. All right. That's our show.

Pete, you've won nothing. Thank you. And we'll see you on the next episode of words are fun. Goodbye forever.

Humility by David Tenson. Perhaps humility feels like this, to shut my mouth, quiet my critique, and make space for sapling and seed only time away from tallness, to leave generous gaps in the canopy of wisdom, to recall that I too remain dependent on the elements and shelter of neighbors and strangers.

to live with a fragile knowing that the unavoidable truth is we all fall and break down only to become a bed for both friend and foe to dig their own roots into just as we have done. Pete! Oh, hi again. Hi, it's me. I've been here the whole time. Today, as you know, we've been talking about humility and being humble.

So on that line, Pete, have you heard of the word, it was very in fashion a while ago, and then even the author that came up with it disowned it because it became too overused. Have you heard of the word humble brag?

Do you want to define what do you think humble bragging is? Or I can just define it for you.

That's just a bunch of spoods. Usually it's over social media and it was started by comedians and then everyone started doing it where it's the idea of subtly letting others know how fantastic your life is while undercutting it with a bit of self-effacing humor or woe-is-me gloss. So it's pretending to be like, oh, boo, who is me? But you're actually bragging.

This was a word coined by late, amazing comedian, writer, comedian and writer and actor Harris Whittles, who is no longer with us anymore. Would you like some examples that I called from Grantland and BuzzFeed? Why does this make you so upset? Wait, first of all, this was just supposed to be like a little bit of an intro. Why are you shaking your head?

Oh, my God, there's blood coming out of your nose.

Oh, so you're worried that you're either humble bragging or just bragging.

Well, none of that was humble bragging. That was just being proud of your work.

Yeah. Right. Here, let me give you some examples, some historical examples called from Grantland and BuzzFeed that Harris Whittles picked off of social media. These are all celebrities talking about things. See if you can figure out the difference between what you just said and what they're saying. Do you remember Tequila? Yeah. She had a thing called A Shot of Love.