Notable Examples of Use
The following examples illustrate notable uses of the idiom after its origin in the 1850s.
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) used this concept as a central metaphor in his short story "The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" (1885). Morrowbie Jukes, a European colonist in India, falls into a sand-pit from which he cannot escape. Another man, a native Indian, is also trapped there who 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 force him to do what he swore he would never do: literally eat crow.
After incumbent Harry Truman defeated Thomas Dewey in the 1948 United States presidential election despite many media predictions of a Dewey victory, the Washington Post sent a telegram to the victor:
You Are Hereby Invited To A "Crow Banquet" To Which This Newspaper Proposes To Invite Newspaper Editorial Writers, Political Reporters And Editors, Including Our Own, Along With Pollsters, Radio Commentators And Columnists . . . Main Course Will Consist Of Breast Of Tough Old Crow En Glace. (You Will Eat Turkey.)Read more about this topic: Eating Crow
Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or examples:
“Every notable advance in technique or organization has to be paid for, and in most cases the debit is more or less equivalent to the credit. Except of course when it’s more than equivalent, as it has been with universal education, for example, or wireless, or these damned aeroplanes. In which case, of course, your progress is a step backwards and downwards.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)