Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of eat crow English)
Wikipedia
Eating crow is an American colloquial idiom, meaning humiliation by admitting wrongness or having been proven wrong after taking a strong position. Crow is presumably foul-tasting in the same way that being proven wrong might be emotionally hard to swallow. The exact origin of the idiom is unknown, but it probably began with an American story published around 1850 about a slow-witted New York farmer. Eating crow is of a family of idioms having to do with eating and being proven incorrect, such as to "eat dirt" and to "eat your hat" (or shoe), all probably originating from "to eat one's words", which first appears in print in 1571 in one of John Calvin's tracts, on Psalm 62: “God eateth not his words when he hath once spoken”.
Usage examples of "eating crow".
In fact, he had never liked the idea of eating crow at all, and he was not about to start now-not when there was tasty, whole-roasted mephitis mephitis to be had instead.
It was a good thing they had, or they'd have had a choice between starving and (literally) eating crow.
At the end of their second, record-breaking year of unprecedented sales, brother Kogh Ademian journeyed down to Richmond, hat in hand, visibly eating crow and insisting that it was a familial responsibility for Rupen and Bagrat to keep all the Ademian businesses in the family, not to mention taking advantage of the wealth and influence of his Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated.