Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • The entrails of a deer: same as numbles.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun plural The entrails and coarser parts of a deer; hence, sometimes, entrails, in general.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun archaic Animal entrails, especially of a deer.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Variant of numbles.

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Examples

  • The word was often written in English umbles and humbles.

    A Bundle of Ballads Henry Morley 1858

  • Medieval nobles helped themselves to the finer cuts of the stag, leaving the "umbles" - the heart, liver, and entrails-to the servants.

    The Whole Deer 2003

  • The "umbles" of the deer are constantly the perquisites of the gamekeeper.

    Notes and Queries, Number 06, December 8, 1849 Various

  • Pepys's age, I venture to submit that the _humble pie_ of that period was indeed the pie named in the list quoted; and not only so, but that it was made out of the "umbles" or entrails of the deer, a dish of the second table, inferior of course to the venison pasty which smoked upon the dais, and therefore not inexpressive of that humiliation which the term "eating humble pie" now painfully describes.

    Notes and Queries, Number 06, December 8, 1849 Various

  • [The umbles are the liver, kidneys, and other portions of the inside of the deer.

    Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete Samuel Pepys 1668

  • [The umbles are the liver, kidneys, and other portions of the inside of the deer.

    Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 17: July/August 1662 Samuel Pepys 1668

  • [The umbles are the liver, kidneys, and other portions of the inside of the deer.

    Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1662 N.S. Samuel Pepys 1668

  • The special Christmas food was mostly sweet: gingerbread dolls; frumenty, made with wheat and eggs and honey; perry, the sweet pear wine that made her giggly; and Christmas umbles, tripes boiled for hours, then baked in a sweet pie.

    The Pillars of the Earth FOLLETT, Ken 1989

  • When he dined out, he says that his host gave him "the meanest dinner of beef, shoulder and umbles of venison, and a few pigeons, and all in the meanest manner that ever I did see, to the basest degree."

    A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus Arthur Conan Doyle 1894

  • The umbles, with skin, head, chine, and shoulders of the deer, were the keepers 'share in the brittling.

    A Bundle of Ballads Henry Morley 1858

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