"Eating crow"

January 16, 2005, 16:50

Kalleh

Quinion does write about it, but not with a lot of detail about its origins, though he goes into great detail about it not coming from an 1888 claim that it came from the War of 1812. This claim was that an American went hunting and accidentally crossed the British lines, where he shot a crow. A British officer caught him and complimented him on his "fine shooting" and persuaded the American to hand over his gun. The officer then levelled his gun and told the soldier that as a punishment he must take a bite of the crow. The American obeyed, got his gun back, and then made the British officer eat the rest of the crow! However, this apparently is not the origin of the word. The first recording of "eat crow" occurred in the 1850s and referred to eating a boiled crow.

Beyond that fun story, Quinion just seems to guess at the origins with this statement: " 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."

January 16, 2005, 20:59

<wordnerd>

The concept may go back much farther. According to Online Etymology, the name "Walter Etecroue turns up 1361 in the Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London."

January 16, 2005, 21:10

<wordnerd>

Quinion says, "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."

Oh, really? No offense, Mr. Quinion, but consider:

For one thing, the crow is not a carnivore; it is an omnivore.
For another, where does he get the notion that carnivore meat is necessarily "rank and extremely distasteful"?
Finally, even if crow meat is unusually distasteful, it's quite a leap from there to the idiom. Do you know whether enough people had sampled crow to make its putative bad taste well enough known to be proverbial? And why, of all distasteful experiences, was this particular one selected for metaphor, with no visible connection between this particular "distaste" (of crow) and the "distaste of admitting fallibility"?

It seems to me that Quinion has not thought the matter through with his usual thoroughness.

January 17, 2005, 15:36

Kalleh

When I read it, I thought that there are a lot of things that I can think of that might taste "rank and extremely distasteful." I wondered why the "crow" was specifically identified for this meaning.

January 21, 2005, 01:23

Caterwauller

You know, Kalleh, that's a great question! In thinking about it myself, I'd think that it's because the crow represents (for me) a loud, obnoxious-sounding bird. The crow's caws are noisy rather than lyrical, and harder to feel comfortable with. I wonder if that is why crow is the bird of choice when needing to admit to having said or done something one shouldn't have.

January 22, 2005, 11:52

tinman

From the OED Online:

quote:
to eat (boiled) crow (U.S. colloq.): to be forced to do something extremely disagreeable and humiliating.

[1851 San Francisco Picayune 3 Dec. 1/6, I kin eat a crow, but I'll be darned if I hanker after it.] 1872 Daily News 31 July, Both [are]..in the curious slang of American politics, ‘boiled crow’ to their adherents. 1877 N. & Q. 5th Ser. VIII. 186/1 A newspaper editor, who is obliged..to advocate ‘principles’ different from those which he supported a short time before, is said to ‘eat boiled crow’. 1884 ‘MARK TWAIN’ Lett. (1917) II. 443 Warner and Clark are eating their daily crow in the paper. 1885 Mag. Amer. Hist. XIII. 199 ‘To eat crow’ means to recant, or to humiliate oneself. 1930 ‘E. QUEEN’ French Powder Myst. xxiv. 196, I should merely be making an ass of myself if I accused someone and then had to eat crow. 1970 New Yorker 17 Oct. 39/1, I was going to apologize, eat crow, offer to kiss and make up.

Tinman