Call a spade a spade
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Speak plainly, and say cu', ca', po' and fo'." --Ragionamenti (1534–36) by Pietro Aretino |
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To "call a spade a spade" is to speak honestly and directly about a topic, specifically topics that others may avoid speaking about due to their sensitivity or embarrassing nature. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1913) defines it as
- "To be outspoken, blunt, even to the point of rudeness; to call things by their proper names without any "beating about the bush"."
Its ultimate source is Plutarch's Apophthegmata Laconica (178B) which has Template:Lang (ten skafen skafen legontas). Template:Lang (skafe) means "basin, trough", but Erasmus mis-translated it (as if from σπάθη) as Template:Lang "shovel" in his Apophthegmatum opus. Lucian De Hist. Conscr. (41) has Template:Lang (ta suka suka, ten skafen de skafen onomason) "calling a fig a fig, and a trough a trough".
The phrase was introduced to English in 1542 in Nicolas Udall's translation of Erasmus, Apophthegmes, that is to saie, prompte saiynges. First gathered by Erasmus:
- Philippus aunswered, that the Macedonians wer feloes of no fyne witte in their termes but altogether grosse, clubbyshe, and rusticall, as they whiche had not the witte to calle a spade by any other name then a spade.
It is evident that the word spade refers to the instrument used to move earth, a very common tool. The same word was used in England and in Holland, Erasmus' country of origin.
The Oxford English Dictionary records a more forceful variant, "to call a spade a bloody shovel", attested since 1919.
The phrase predates the use of the word "spade" as an ethnic slur against African-Americans, which was not recorded until 1928; however, in contemporary U.S. society, the idiom is often avoided due to potential confusion with the slur.
