Consider the humble “humble.” “Humble” is a word that’s been part of English since about the 1200s, which is a pretty long time. And in those centuries, “humble” has meant some very different things compared to how we use it now. In a sense, it’s the opposite of “proud.”
That meaning is one of a number that “humble” has had, but t’s also about the oldest. Chaucer used “humble” that way in The Parson’s Tale in the 1300s. But at about the same time, “humble” was also used to indicate an inferior; someone lower in a social hierarchy. That’s where the phrase “your humble servant” comes from, and Chaucer used “humble” that way, too, in The Clerk’s Tale.
Probably as an extension of the hierarchical meaning, by the 1500s “humble” was being used to mean lower in physical elevation. If John’s house was on a hill and Bob’s was in a valley, then Bob’s was “humble” compared to John’s. Something similar applied to plants — if one plant tended to grow closer to the ground, it was “humble,” like moss compared to a tree.
It’s a bit of a stretch, but maybe there’s a connection between the social ranking sense of humble and the next meaning, which is organ meat, particularly of a deer. Although today the phrase “humble pie” is a metaphor and means you’ve been caught making a big mistake and should exercise more restraint, up until the 1800s “humble pie” was a real meat pie, something like the meat pies still popular today some areas.
Then there’s “humbling”, which now means lowering yourself in social rank (“he humbled himself by begging for what he wanted”), but long ago meant something very different: the buzzing of bees. Once again, there’s an example from Chaucer, this time in “House of Fame” (one of his pre-Canterbury Tales works).
“Humble” has also meant cattle and deer without antlers, and even pertained to grain, like corn or wheat. When you were sifting grain, the lighter grain was thought to be of poorer quality, and called “humble” or sometimes “humblecorn.” “Humble” was also the name of a process applied to grain: removing the “awns” (the grassy part that’s not useful) was for several centuries called “humbling.”
There seems to be a common thread throughout the ways “humble” has been humbly employed for nearly a millennium. Even its origin story is pretty humble. It was adopted from Old French, where it was…wait for it…”humble.” Too humble to even change its name!
