swallow one's pride, to

Fig. to forget one's pride and accept something humiliating. I had to swallow my pride and admit that I was wrong. When you're trying to master a new skill, you find yourself swallowing your pride quite often.

Humble oneself, as in She decided to swallow her pride and apologize. This idiom employs swallow in the sense of "refrain from expressing," a usage dating from the early 1600s.

To humble oneself when circumstances demand it. The verb to swallow has been used in the meaning of putting up with unpleasantness since about 1600. The original locution was to swallow one’s spittle, which denoted suppressing anger or some other strong emotion. It appeared in the Bible, “How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?” (Job 7:19).