Meaning & use
swallowing your pride
Last updated
Meaning
phraseidiom
The act of accepting that you were wrong or that you need help, even though it makes you feel embarrassed.
Grammar: Used as a noun phrase. The verb form is 'swallow your pride'.
Patterns
- swallowing your pride
- swallow your pride
Swallowing your pride and apologizing can save a friendship.
After months of arguing, swallowing his pride was the only way to end the fight.
She found swallowing her pride harder than losing the argument.
Common combinations
- swallow your pride
- He had to swallow his pride and ask for a loan.
- swallowing your pride
- Swallowing your pride is never easy.
- a matter of swallowing your pride
- It's just a matter of swallowing your pride and saying sorry.
Synonyms and how they differ
- humbling yourself
- Similar but focuses on making yourself lower in status; 'swallowing your pride' is more about accepting a difficult truth.
- eating humble pie
- Informal and means admitting you were wrong in a humiliating way; 'swallowing your pride' is more neutral.
Opposites
Word family
- swallow your pride phrase
- The base form of the idiom.
Commonly confused: swallowing your pride or swallow your words?
swallowing your pride vs swallow your words
This means to take back something you said, not to accept a difficult situation.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'swallowing your pride' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Swallowing your pride' is a fixed phrase meaning accepting something embarrassing. Option C uses it correctly as a subject. Option A uses 'your' when it should be 'his'; option B mixes pronouns ('she' with 'your'); option D is not a natural use.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “swallowing your pride”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.