Reply #25: Actually, you may be wrong as to the origins of that.... [View All]

[skooooo]

Oxford English Dictionary

2. a. Phr. to call a spade a spade, to call things by their real names, without any euphemism or mincing of matters; to use plain or blunt language; to be straightforward to the verge of rudeness.
In the ultimate source of the first quotation, Plutarch's Apophthegmata 178B, the Greek words are . There is no evidence that (a trough, basin, bowl, boat, etc.) had the sense of ‘spade’; in rendering it by ligo Erasmus evidently confused it with or other derivatives from the stem of to dig. Lucian De Hist. Conscr. 41 gives a fuller form of the phrase, , .

1542 UDALL Erasm. Apoph. 167 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. 1580 GIFFORD Posie of Gilloflowers Wks. (Grosart) 101, I cannot say the crow is white, But needes must call a spade a spade. 1589 Marprel. Epit. Aij, I am plaine, I must needs call a Spade a Spade. 1630 Pathomachia IV. ii. 34, I am a plaine Macedonian, I must need call a Spade, a Spade. 1647 TRAPP Marrow Gd. Authors in Comm. Ep. 641 Gods people shall not spare to call a spade a spade, a niggard a niggard. 1706 E. WARD Hud. Rediv. I. vii. 11 This is not Time of Day For Truth to be so obvious made, We must not call a Spade, a Spade. 1731-8 SWIFT Polite Conv. 199, I am old Tell-Truth; I love to call a Spade a Spade. 1837 W. IRVING Capt. Bonneville III. 115 They are the most unsavory vagabonds in their ordinary colloquies; they make no hesitation to call a spade a spade. 1884 Punch 15 Nov. 229/2 If it is absolutely necessary to call a spade a spade then it must be done in a whisper.