(h/n)umble (was: Some data on herb, /hw-/)

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 12:15 PM 1/29/01 +0800, you wrote:
>At 10:16 AM -0600 1/29/01, Natalie Maynor wrote:
>>
>>Am I the only person left who pronounces h-less "humble"?  With the
>>h, I think it's an oil company -- or at least used to be.
>>    --Natalie Maynor (maynor at ra.msstate.edu)
>
>I've never heard "umble", except of course in contexts like "The
>Ravens forced the Giants to eat umble pie", referring of course to
>deer's innards.  Actually I see on checking in the OED that "(eat)
>humble pie" is a nice illustration of metanalysis as well as folk
>etymology, since the 'innards' or, as the OED puts it, 'inward parts'
>meaning was originally associated with the form "numbles", which only
>later turned into "umbles".  There's a cite for "numble pie" as late
>as 1822 (Robin Hood is the eater, and the meaning is still literal).
>It looks as though this metanalysis requires the shift in the context
>
>a numble-pie > an umble pie > a(n) humble pie
>
>since otherwise it's hard to know why a plural noun like "numbles"
>would have undergone this reanalysis, which typically affects
>singular count nouns (newt, nickname, nuncle, nother; orange, apron,
>umpire).  But how DID "numbles" lose its n-?
>
>larry

This adds a new wrinkle to my comment on Humbles as a surname.  Since the
name ends in -s, it presumably came from the deer-innards meaning (but what
a name!).  The orthographic 'h' was added by analogy with adj. 'humble', I
assume, but his English-descended family continued to drop the /h/.


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm