eat one's words

Be forced to retract something one has said, as in The incumbent won easily, so I had to eat my words. This expression was already proverbial in John Ray's English Proverbs (1670). [Second half of 1500s]

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Pieter	PEE-tər	Dutch
Phillis	['fiis]
Tanja	TAHN-yah (German, Finnish)	German, Finnish, Serbian, Croatian, Slovene, Macedonian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian
Aldwin	['ɔ:ldwin]
Gayathri	-	Tamil, Indian, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu
Agam	-	Hebrew