It is awards season and with it, of course, comes the interminable and intolerable acceptance speeches.
My intention here is not to slag on Adele. She is a gigantic talent, but at the Grammy Awards recently she committed the cardinal sin (in my book of pet peeves) of saying she was “humbled” at winning all the major 2017 awards, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Pop Solo Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album.
Moreover, the entertainment media reported her being “humbled” as a headline-worthy sentiment, which is akin to touting an athlete giving 110 per cent or just wanting to contribute to the team as significant.
It has become the greatest cliché for winners to say they are humbled, but I am pretty sure it is not what they mean.
Very early in my journalism career an editor told me she had submitted me for a magazine award. In my naivety, I mistook that to mean I had been nominated not understanding how the process worked. I was proud and made the mistake of mentioning the “nomination” at a meeting where I was brutally shot down by a senior writer, who noted that I could not possibly know that because the finalists had not been released.
That was a humbling experience.
As it turned out, I was not nominated.
That was also a humbling experience.
I have gone on to be nominated many times and have won a few. The losses are usually humbling. The wins never are.
Winning a bunch of Grammy Awards is not a humbling experience. In fact, it should be the exact opposite, but she said it nevertheless.
My gut reaction is always that these great entertainers, athletes and politicians who use the word are being disingenuous.
On further reflection, though, and giving them the benefit of the doubt, I suspect they simply do not understand the correct usage of the word as it has come to be such a standard a thing to say that they simply feel obligated to say it.
I think what they really mean is that they are honoured, which does perhaps indicate some degree of humility in the sense they do not feel entitled to the accolade, and possibly even in some cases undeserving.
I don’t like it and I have always thought it was incorrect usage, but it would be contrary to the intention of this column, not to dig a little deeper.
Is it really a misuse of the word? Is its use in the context of feeling honoured an example of the evolution of English?
In the sense of a strict definition, to be humbled is to be lowered or reminded of one’s relative insignificance. Synonyms include deflated, disgraced, embarrassed and humiliated. That doesn’t sound to me like the same thing as honoured or something one might feel when being honoured.
So, is it actually possible to feel humbled by a big win?
It occurs to me that when dealing with the verb humble, which is sense in which it is being used here, it is highly unlikely.
If we look at the adjective humble, however, it could possibly apply.
Oxford defines the adjectival sense as “having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s importance.” The American Heritage dictionary adds “showing deferential or submissive respect.”
In that sense, Adele’s Grammy experience may have indeed made her feel humble as she seemed to genuinely believe the Best Album Grammy should have gone to Beyoncé. And, certainly in her acceptance speech, Adele showed deferential and submissive respect for the other singer.
There has also been a suggestion that the Grammys are racist. Without delving into the quagmire of that debate, if it were the case that Adele believes the awards to be racist, I could see her being embarrassed by winning if she believed it was because she is white and Beyoncé is black and not because both albums are equally meritorious.
A kind of interesting quirk about humility and winners and losers it is always the former and never the latter, who say they feel humbled.
Ultimately I believe humble (verb) in the context of winning is incorrect usage, but a case could be made for humble (adjective) as correct usage.
And finally, in order to be humbled, you cannot be humble.
