So, today’s post finds me in an awkward situation. I’m obliged to admit an opinion I’ve expressed earlier wasn’t, in fact, a smart one. So, in typical linguistic mystic style, I’ll couch it in a brief discussion of a delightful English idiom (an idiom is a set phrase with a certain meaning which might not be obvious from the words themselves). Today’s utterly applicable idiom is “To Eat Crow”.

For those unfamiliar with the expression, “To Eat Crow” (or “eating crow”) is an American English expression which refers to humbling yourself by admitting that a previously (and often strongly) stated opinion was wrong or incorrect. It’s roughly equivalent to the British expression “to eat humble pie” (colorfully discussed here). Now, here’s an example from this very blog to better show you the meaning.

A Brilliant Example of Crow Consumption

A few weeks ago, in my post “A Conditional Surrender”, I said the following:

I still don’t care for the Intel Chips, and would still love nothing more than a new line of PPC Macs, produced by Apple Computers, which would ideally be split off from Apple Music Whoring™.

(and)

6) I will be allowed to maintain my prior sentiments that iTunes, Spotlight, iChat, and, most importantly, the Intel Switch, suck.

Why am I eating crow, you ask? Well… I’m currently writing this post from an Intel Mac (MacBook Pro), and quite frankly, it’s a wonderful machine.

Recently, our family business lost one of its laptop computers, the poor old Powerbook was cracked in half in a terrible stroller-folding accident. Because of this, I was given the opportunity to upgrade my machine and pass my old one down to replace the less-used machine. After doing some research, I realized that, even though the soul might be different, the Intel Macs have a lot going for them in terms of specs.

So, I upgraded to a 17″ MacBook Pro, and have been very impressed. I’ve only run into a few bugs with the Intel software. (One is worth mentioning here: Praat’s amplitude bars don’t work during recording, but it still records. It’s a known issue in the Intel version, and the creator is working to fix it as soon as he can.) The performance gain is huge, and the software (front row and photo booth) is slick. The MagSafe adapter alone is worth the price of admission.
Here’s the part where I eat crow: The Intel switch might not have been such a bad idea after all. It gets us better specs, more efficiency, and a whole new set of chip options. Yeah, the transition might have cost a little of the computer’s essence, but given the performance I’ve seen, it’s worth it. If you’ve got the cash to do so, upgrading to a MacBook Pro is definitely worth it. I was wrong, and you can disregard my previous knocks on the Intel Macs. (Note, however, that the iTunes Music Store still sucks. That’s not gonna change any time soon.)

How about the Idiom?

So, now that I’ve eaten my share of crow (purely for linguistic benefit, mind you), let’s discuss this beautiful idiom. Another wonderful example of conventional usage comes from a pet project of mine, the EnronSent Corpus:

enronsent24:33788:I’m back in the office today. Well I see you have to eat crow! I didn’t get a chance to watch the game but I saw CU play Kansas St. and CU looked good. I even think CU has a good chance of beating UT in Austin this weekend.

So, it’s mainstream enough to have been used in the emails of Enron employees. The next question, of course, it where the idiom came from. This article explains the origins as follows:

The origin seems fairly obvious: the meat of the crow, being a carnivore, is presumably rank and extremely distasteful, and the experience is easily equated to the mental anguish of being forced to admit one’s fallibility.

The author also gives a very inventive folk etymology (a story about the origin of a word created by people at large, which is usually just as colorful as it is wrong) for the expression involving two officers in the war of 1812, but then points out that the expression didn’t show up until the 1850’s, and even then, was in the form “to eat boiled crow”.

Wikipedia comes up with another wonderful etymology (explanation of the word’s origin) for the term:

Another possible connection comes from a short story by Rudyard Kipling. In his story ‘The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes’ Morrowbie Jukes falls into a place from which he cannot escape. Another man trapped there catches wild crows and eats them, but Morrowbie in his pride declares, ‘I shall never eat crow!’ After days of nothing to eat, his hunger and desperation finally forces him to do what he swore he would never do – literally eat crow.

However, I’m tempted to say that this is another folk etymology. If the first article is to be trusted, the expression first showed up in the 1850’s, and Rudyard Kipling was born in 1865. Unless he had a pension for prenatal storytelling, the expression was likely not coined by him, although he may well have written it into a story.

Interestingly, my electronic etymology dictionary mentions the existence of a “Walter Etecroue” in the 1361 calendar of letter books of London. It also dates the expression’s first appearances to 1877 (when Rudyard Kipling was 12), so the Kipling hypothesis is still doubtful.

So, really, like so many other expressions and words, the origins of this idiom are lost. However, it’s still a great expression. Recanting a badly thought out belief is never pleasant for anybody, but I should really be more cautious then I am. I’m a vegetarian, and it wouldn’t do to be eating crow often. I wonder if Soy Crows count…

Tagged with Computers and Software, Conventional Linguistics, Language Usage, Notes, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | 4 Comments

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4 Comments so far
  1. PersonShaped December 30, 2006 11:46 pm

    It’s interesting that the (British) author of that article claims that ‘eating crow’ is the “best known traditional expression” for humbly acknowledging an error. A) I wonder what kind of dialectical variation exists in the US for “eating crow/my hat/my words”. B) I wish that DARE had an online version.

  2. Praat is fixed for Intel Macs! : Notes from a Linguistic Mystic February 26, 2007 12:28 am

    [...] few months back, I commented that the Amplitude Bars in the Praat Phonetic Analysis software were broken on Intel [...]

  3. HomoHabilis June 24, 2007 10:02 am

    “Unless he had a pension for prenatal storytelling….” I suspect you mean “penchant”?

    As a Mac user (exclusively) since my first Plus in 1988, I was initially unexcited about the Intel transition, but after replacing my 17″ PowerBook with a 17″ MacBookPro, I’m sold. Finally Mac OS X is beginning to approach the performance speed of OS 9, and the Mac’s new ability to easily run Windows (if desired; I don’t) and mainstream Linux (yes, PPC Linuxes exist, but seem like poor cousins) has given it a huge leg up in the computer market. Given that, according to solid rumor, an Intel version of OS X was always in parallel development, I suspect Steve intended this move all along.

    I was also not initially entranced by OS X, though its multilingual capabilities were the first thing that really interested me about it. But it’s become clear that by moving to a Unix-based OS, Apple has leapfrogged from being the outsider OS dissed (quite undeservedly) by all the “serious” computer world to a position now more central than Windows. Computer geeks know Windows and work with Windows, but they *love* Unix, and Mac OS is now the Mercedes Benz of desktop Unix, attracting droves of expert programmers.

    I’m interested in the potential of open-source software, and have lately been looking at Linux and the various OS applications. Linux can’t really come close to replacing Mac OS for me, but I’m following and cheering its development, and wish Ubuntu especially all success.

    I’m particularly excited about the OpenDocument formats, which promise to alleviate a major annoyance repeatedly encountered in the proprietary software world. My favorite apps in the classic Mac OS were AppleWorks and PageMaker; both are now dead, and no current app can easily read their files. And, even if I find current apps to replace them, how do I know they too won’t be killed off in their turn, for reasons having nothing to do with their quality or worth to users, leaving me with yet another bunch of now-useless documents, yet another expense and chore to migrate to yet another pair of apps which in their turn…. I’m tired of it. the Open Source alternatives have some distance to go to reach full usability, but they’re being developed by the people who actually use them, so they will be what users need, and there’s no reason why they won’t continue to live indefinitely — or if they ever die, it’ll be easy to transition to whatever replaces them.

    Someday, perhaps, we’ll see a computer world universally based on Unix, with various forms of Linux, BSD or other open implementations used all over the world where Windows now dominates, and Mac OS occupying the same place in the computer market as does BMW in automotive — just as Steve once noted in response to the old “but Apple only has 3% of the market” carp. And then we’ll see if Microsoft can write a good Unix-based OS.

  4. will June 24, 2007 10:14 am

    You’re very right, I did mean “penchant”, and I’m a tad embarrassed that that one slipped by me. Where, if anywhere, would you like me to link in the sidebar (“Links for Errors”)?

    I also agree with much of what you’re saying. I loved my 15″ Powerbook, but my 17″ MBP is by far the nicest computer I’ve ever owned. If you’ve not, you might want to give a search through my archives for a series I did on switching to Linux, open source, and other related topics. They sound like they’re just up your alley.

    Thanks again for the catch and for the comment!

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