Stop Saying You’re Humbled
Saying “I’m humbled” when good things happen isn’t only wrong; it’s the opposite of humility
It’s a new year, which means the film industry is engaged in awards season and you get to find out which studios campaigned most effectively this fall. It also means viewers are in for three months of beautiful people in expensive clothes talking about how humbled they are to be accepting their awards because the public has decided they’re the best. Well, not the public exactly. More like a cadre of critics with their own agendas and subjective preferences. But still. Winners get to bask in the glory of international adulation and somehow it’s all a very humbling experience, apparently.
The use of the word “humbled” has become de rigeur when receiving honors and it isn’t just a Hollywood thing. Whether it’s the Presidential Medal of Freedom or the Betsy Lee Smith Memorial Southeast Tumbleweed County Chamber of Commerce Tax Accountant of the Third Fiscal Quarter Award, the usage is ubiquitous.
Athletes do it. Musicians do it. Politicians do it. Even fucking writers do it.
Which raises the question: just what is so humbling about being told you’re great?
The simple answer, of course, is that nothing about it is humbling. On the surface, what people mean when they say they’re humbled to win something is actually that they’re honored. And explicitly acknowledging that you’re honored would actually be a pretty humble thing to do. Saying you’re humbled, on the other hand, is just a transparent piece of grandstanding.
So why do people insist on saying they’re humbled? The answer is a little complicated.
The first explanation: it’s a straight-up usage error. Usage errors help drive the evolution of language. For every Shakespeare, Milton, or tech writer coining timeless neologisms, there are thousands of people who just plain think “nonplussed” means “unimpressed.” (It doesn’t.) This is the reality of the imperfect comprehensibility of human communication (and perhaps the species’ everlasting unwillingness — despite ever more ease of access to information — to consult a dictionary).
Because of this, there are those who hold that insisting on correct usage is nothing but elitism and snobbery — and that’s true to some degree. Grammar snobbery, and in particular correcting people, is a way to be strategically obtuse, shut down a conversation, and maintain a power dynamic.
But that’s also a simplistic position to take on language. Words have meanings and language isn’t an epistemological free-for-all.
“You know what I mean” is something people often say when they themselves don’t know what they mean. (Writing teachers can attest to this.) Good arguments require that one make one’s point known — and an integral part of this is clarity. Knowing what the words coming out of your mouth mean helps ensure both that you’re understood and that you actually understand the conversations around you.
That said, there’s no escaping the fluidity of language and we all use words everyday that don’t mean what they used to mean. (Verbing happens.) Realistically, we sit somewhere in between haphazard subjectivity and rulebook-bound rigidity; we just don’t all agree on where that place is.
Most misuse — see “nonplussed” — is generally harmless and even kind of amusing for the interlocutor. But in the case of “humble” and the cultural conversations in which it’s being used, it isn’t always simple misuse so much as a rhetorical choice or a mindset. It isn’t unlike, say, wearing a flag lapel pin. It plays on the sympathies of the audience to the advantage of the person doing the talking. In other words, the disingenuous use of “humble” can be a less-than-humble part of a larger public act.
I’m hardly the first person to complain about this phenomenon. One fun rant compares “humbled” with “literally,” a word supposedly misused so often that dictionaries eventually accepted that literally might not literally mean literal.
On one level, it’s an apt comparison, since the “literally” problem has drawn its fair share of linguistic complaints. But the anger over the non-literal use of literal was always misplaced. It was never really a usage error; it was just figurative language (as opposed to literal language, ironically). “I literally wanted to kill Becky” is hyperbole, a rhetorical device probably as old as language itself. Both the speaker and the audience know that the speaker didn’t actually want to kill Becky. The speaker was just mad at Becky. It’s overstatement. It’s humorous. It’s effective. What it’s not is a usage error.
Unlike “humbled.”
Here’s what “humble” actually means, according to trusty, old Merriam-Webster online: “not proud or haughty,” “reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission,” “ranking low in a hierarchy or scale.”
Humble denotes the exact opposite psychic effect of being told you’re the best. If you’ve just been voted in as mayor and you’re giving your victory speech, you’re not feeling humbled. People have literally just given you a degree of power and control over their lives. You can be grateful. You can be honored. You can appreciate the weight of the responsibility. But you are not humbled by that moment. The job and its requirements may eventually humble you, but winning does not. Losing the election, conversely, is a humbling experience.
An experience that truly humbles is one that reminds you of your own lowness, unworthiness, or at least lack of greatness in comparison with others. Humbled is when you get posterized in a basketball game — doubly so if you actually wind up on a poster with your face in Vince Carter’s crotch. Humbled is when your wife leaves you for her yoga instructor. Humbled is when you’ve just received your creative writing degree and hit the job market.
While there’s no clear evidence on when people began using the word incorrectly, my hypothesis is that it started out as shorthand for some version of this: “Winning this award and realizing some of the greats who’ve come before me is truly humbling.” This is still kind of a misuse, even if it’s approaching a more accurate statement. The problem of course is that being grouped in with luminaries is still probably not in itself humbling. Stacking your accomplishments up against the greats may humble you, but being told you’re one of them should not. Long story short, people still aren’t saying what they mean . In fact, they’re counting on you to “know what they mean.”
Unlike “literally,” “humbled” isn’t being used as a figurative rhetorical device; at best it’s just wrong and at worst it’s a calculated falsehood designed to give the impression that someone is actually quite down to earth.
Golda Meir supposedly said, “Don’t be so humble. You’re not that great.” Displays of humility are by their nature rooted in disingenuousness and pride. An honest reaction to being honored would be to let your joy and boosted self-esteem show. To maintain that you’re unworthy or humble is, aside from being insufferable, a form of boasting.
This is what humble actually looks like: Roberto Benigni’s jubilation at winning Best Foreign Picture in 1999. It’s human, it’s honest, it’s grateful — it is, in a word, humble, not in spite of his exuberance but because of it.
Granted, there are people for whom the spotlight or accolades are genuinely terrifying or horribly vulgar. And there are those who truly believe they aren’t worthy of the praise they receive. But you won’t find these people saying the experience of an award is humbling. Overwhelming perhaps. But not humbling. It’s quite different from people who play the aw-shucks game.
But that little-old-me humbleness sells. Just being normal folks sells.
Politicians spend serious cash on consultants who turn them into the candidates you want to have a beer with because they don’t talk fancy and don’t rely on book learning to tell them about complex issues. (In fact, they’re so down to earth, they won’t even acknowledge the issues are more complex than a Manichean struggle between freedom and oppression.) They’re just like you. And if they could be you, well, maybe you could be them!
Similarly, celebrities like Taylor Swift have built careers on getting fans to feel like they’re buddies. She has normal, everyday heartbreak, just like you. She has her coterie who are, aside from their money, fame, talent, and genetically and/or surgically gifted aesthetic appearances, just like you and your friends. Look at them palling around on Instagram.
It’s all a cynical feint designed to get you to identify with them, to believe that their successes are your successes. You won’t be getting a royalty check anytime soon and you’ll never be invited to the afterparty, but you’re practically one of the crew!
After all, you must be important. They’re humbled by the fact you think they’re so great.
Dane A. Wisher is based in Brooklyn.
