Comments on: Financial Times 14,101 by Cinephile

By: Paul B

Paul B — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 06:51:50 +0000

We still haven’t connected, alas. But yes, I too gave up and went to bed!

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 22:33:56 +0000

I guess humble/umble doesn’t seem like a homophone of itself to me, they seem like different words, but no matter. It is past my bedtime now, good night and thanks for all your input into the blog today.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 22:14:13 +0000

I said that for reasons of logic the clue can only be parsed as a homophone of prayer-y, and that apart from anything else, e.g. that humble can’t really be a homophone of itself, there’s insufficient information to justify any other reading.

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 22:06:34 +0000

Certainly, I agree my parsing was mistaken, I say as much in the blog and in the comments. I don’t argue with your point about humble-pie either, I always thought that was the case too.

I was just querying your comment @22:

Just so long as we remain clear that it can’t be a homophone…

Humble and umble seem reasonable homphones as the words have different meanings stemmimg from different roots.

That humble-pie is a mondegreen doesn’t really have anything to do with it. Humble-pie is not in the clue, not in the parsing, mistaken or otherwise.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:51:32 +0000

Let me spell it out: the origination of the phrase ‘humble pie’ involves people mishearing humble where numbles (nombles or umbles) was correct. The etymology of humble per se has nothing to do with this.

I’ll take the opportunity to reiterate the point I’m making, since we seem to have strayed: there isn’t sufficient information in the clue to refer solvers to prairie oyster, Collins def two. It’s much simpler than that, as we saw above.

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:41:49 +0000

In that case why would Chambers give the derivation of humble as [Fr, from Latin humilis low, from humus the ground]? Seems odd for them to write that if it is actually a mishearing of another word.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 21:28:00 +0000

Humble is misheard for numbles, nombles or umbles.

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 20:51:27 +0000

The homophone would be a bit dodgy anyway as Chambers does not give umble as a singular noun, only umbles as a plural. I suppose one prarie oyster could be an umble, if prayery can be a word then umble could be one too.

Checking Chambers, humble meaning modest etc comes form a Latin root humilis meaning low. It is not a mondegreen, nothing to do with umbles at all.

By: PeeDee

PeeDee — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 20:37:24 +0000

But humble-pie is not in the clue at all, nor in my (mistaken) parsing of it. It is humble and umble that are homophones (ish), a prarie oyster being an example of umble.

That humble-pie is a confusion of two words is irrelevant.

BTW, I had not heard of the word mondegreen before, so thanks for that.

By: Paul B

Paul B — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 20:23:35 +0000

Humble (as in humble pie) is a a mondegreen: to start with there was nothing humble about umble pie (and the fact that Heep is very umble, and not even ‘umble, just makes the whole thing a lot worse in my opinion). So humble pie isn’t the dish of nomble, or possibly bull’s bollocks, referred to up the thread, it’s tied to the newly- and mistakenly-created meaning connected with humiliation. Thus the homophone HAS to be the prayer-y one. Yah?