Talk:Call a spade a spade

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Spade?[edit]

Does "spade" in this context refer to the type of shovel, or the old derogatory term for a person of African heritage?
143.182.124.2 17:44, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The expression to call a spade a spade is thousands of years old and etymologically has nothing whatsoever to do with any racial sentiment. The exact origin is uncertain; the ancint Greek playwright Menander, in a fragment, said "I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade," but Lucian attributes the phrase to Aristophanes. Later, Plutarch notes that "The Macedonians are a rude and clownish people who call a spade a spade." It first appeared in English in the sixteenth century, and the racial reference from the colour of the suit of playing cards, spades, dates from 20th century. I am currently looking for links etc to make a full edit over the weekend. Till then remember if there are two possible meanings for something and one makes you unhappy then the other was the intended meaning.
-- Drappel 18:03, 15 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. I had always heard this phrase applied to the Latin historian Tacitus whose obsession with writing in an "elevated" style led him to avoid such commonplace words as, well, "shovel" or "spade". (I remember my amusement when I encountered that very passage in his writings.) He should be mentioned in this article.
-- llywrch (talk) 15:58, 26 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's in Annals 1.65 that Tacitus famously refers to "implements for digging earth and cutting turf" because he can't bring himself to use such an unrefined word as "spades". Wish I could find a way of working it into the article … Vilĉjo (talk) 22:44, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
   Abt T & by T.
--Jerzy•t 00:16, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
   Well, Drappel, -- and likewise Llywrch, -- absence of evidence is often not evidence of absence. So are you saying that you checked OED and not even written use of "... black as the ace of spades" by 1900 has been found? Or just that "spade" as a racial designation has that OED status?
   IMO, it is implausible that the single-word term is more that 10 or 20 years newer than the phrase, yet the delay between oral and print use might be a lot longer for the term than the phrase. Consider the likelihood that use of a term of abuse -- esp'ly if it does it'sits work primarily in the in form of trivialization, (i.e. treating an individual --( of a specific group, in this case) -- as no more worthy of attention than a cheap entertainment device is --) is far less likely to find its way into print quickly than is a toothsome - and more generally applicable - simile that it derives from.
--Jerzy•t 00:16 &02:51, 20 July 2014 (UTC)
Although it seems clear from the etymology that it relates to a shovel, the article says this is 'self evident' or 'evident' (sorry, being lazy)... I always thought that it was from the suit in card games before this. So it is not self-evident, or easily assumed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.235.253 (talk) 11:08[:17], 29 September 2013‎
NJX— Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.80.235.253 (talk) 11:08[:36], 29 September 2013‎

Note: A spade is not a shovel, and shovel is not a spade. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.55.165 (talk) 18:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

2007-07-20 Automated pywikipediabot message[edit]

--CopyToWiktionaryBot 02:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Plutarch, in referring to the Macedonians as a very brutish people, said that he had to "call a trough a trough." Erasmus later mis-translated the word "trough" to mean shovel or spade. But it begs the question, what did the original ("to call a trough a trough") mean? In many ancient cities they basically had an open sewer system -- a "trough" which ran next to the street and which carried the feces and garbage, hopefully, downhill. So, it is a reasonable inference that he was saying, "If the Macedonians are indeed crap-filled sewers, they should be called that."

I love wikipedia[edit]

I was sure that there were racist undertones here - but I would have dated both this phrase and the slur as a couple of hundred years old, two times too long for the slur and an order of magnitude off for the phrase. Great to be able to check and cross one thing off the list of things to worry about. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.106.175.189 (talk) 01:30, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You sound like a idiot. First to think that wikipedia is a legitiment source for imformation but also not to be aware that this IS meant as a racial slur. Like many racial and ethnic slurs they didn't start off that way. If you think it's not walk up to a black person on the street and say that to their face. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.117.82.35 (talk) 22:34, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You sound like you may not have seen WP:NICE. Let's be direct but gentle. Text struck. Gregkaye ✍♪ 08:10, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The only person who can say how a phrase is "meant" is the person who said it. Your suggestion that it is only meant as a slur is ridiculous, as is your "proof" that some hypothetical person would be offended by it. Many people have been upset at the use of word "niggardly", assuming it had at its root a racial slur, which it doesn't. To avoid a word or phrase purely because some people have misunderstood its meaning is ridiculous.
Good grief, I've never heard any suggestion that the phrase had (or was ever interpreted by anyone as having) racist connotations, before reading it here. I think that must be a particularly U.S. thing. Vilĉjo (talk) 22:49, 30 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Americans here think it has racist connotations, because of their history. However, the phrase has been used for centuries referring to tools. It has taken on the connotation in most places of "call a spade a spade, and a shovel a shovel", because they are 2 very different tools, but people regularly mix them up in nomenclature. It means "to be clear about what you are saying" instead of mixing nouns and metaphors. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.55.165 (talk) 18:04, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Racial Connection Needs Documentation[edit]

"...[I]n contemporary society the idiom is often avoided due to its allusion to the modern racial slur" appears to be completely anecdotal. This needs a citation, or it needs to be removed.
--AdamRoach (talk) 20:20, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

footnoted my citation, this is my first wikipedia edit, so i hope the formatting is acceptable
--Unmailed letter (talk) 02:37, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the cite. I'm tidying up grammar a bit, but the assertion looks sound.
--AdamRoach (talk) 03:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
looks good
--Unmailed letter (talk) 00:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is not good documentation. There are many more sources that the racial connection is a misunderstanding, yet users want to perpetuate this myth in wikipedia. Why? The first comment, that it is anecdotal, is the correct one. I realize this is 5 years old now, but it should change. How about this book? chapter 6, from OUP? Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends By David Wilton How about a random house blog from 1997? http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/?date=19970115
HoneyBooBew (talk) 16:17, 20 November 2013 (UTC)HoneyBooBew[reply]
UmL made a pair of edits, diligently creating a ref.
--Jerzy•t 06:17, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
this phrase being avoided out of political correctness is a hilarious bit of real life irony. The only thing lacking would be online filters summarily replacing spade, as in the excellent example of misfiring prudery that gave us "Tyson Homosexual"[1] :)
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dbachmann (talk • contribs) 10:08, 26 August 2008
   DB is citing a then-recent article by a WashPost professional blogger. It's about a group hoping to "reclaim" the word "gay", from use by people who'd prefer avoiding labeling an affectional choice with a clinically derived 4-syllable Greek-derived word: they search-and-replace the news they republish for "gay" or "Gay", without effective human oversight.
   I hasten to say that i hope it is neither WP nor Wikt content that supports DB's bizarre use
of "political correctness" to describe one school of "call it a spade" etymology, and
of "prudery" to describe homophobia so extremely paranoid as to include (subconscious?) belief that "gay" is no longer ever used to mean "cheerful" -- nor as a surname.
And i'm just sad (surely we can't blame wikis) that anyone sees reason to consider either the article discussion or the news item as relevant to the other.
--Jerzy•t 06:17, 20 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Only Americans could think this has something to do with race. A ridiculous interpretation. It has nothing to do with that, and never did. That interpretation is entirely based on the racist history of America and its Founders.

Here's an unimpeachable source, which I'm sure the owners of the page will ignore because they want to erase all evidence of "myths" they don't like. But here it is, in case some day NPOV outnumbers the page owners. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763/is-it-racist-to-call-a-spade-a-spade 2603:3023:39F:B800:D0F7:401C:4ACB:A8DD (talk) 21:32, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with that NPR article is that it makes no specific justification of racism for the phrase "to call a spade a spade" it only shows how the word "spade" specifically came to have some racial meaning in the same way that "blackbird, shade, shadow, skillet and smoke" have. Unless there is specific evidence of misuse of the phrase "to call a spade a spade" it seems there is just as much evidence to end the use of the phrase as there is for a restaurant named Skillet or Blackbird to change their name. Mujalifah (talk) 21:19, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Pop Culture references?[edit]

Do we have any pop culture references to the use of the phrase? I think that would help. I can think of one off the top of my head; The Band's song 4% Pantomine.

Oh, Belfast Cowboy,
Lay your cards on the grade
Oh, Belfast Cowboy,
Can you call a Spade a Spade

--63.139.174.185 (talk) 05:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know that we need such a section. But Act 2 of The Importance of Being Earnest has the following exchange:
Cecily: When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade.
NoJoy (talk) 18:53, 5 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
   Agreed, but here's another off topic jest, from low pop culture, that i think of every time i hear the expression:
   Mother Superior is approached by a young nun who is concerned about the vile language drifting in from the adjacent construction site. MS tells her that a life of contemplation is different from one of hand labor, and it's not surprising that the workers tend to call a spade a spade. Nun replies, "Yes, Mother Superior, but why do they have to call it a fucking shovel?"
   Biddi-bang, biddi-boom.
--Jerzy•t 23:07, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Page moved: per discussion Ground Zero | t 02:04, 10 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]


To call a spade a spade → Call a spade a spade – Why don't we just "Call a spade a spade" and put the expression "Call a spade a spade" into the namespace "Call a spade a spade". Apologies for the rhetoric. It couldn't be helped.
See also: Break a leg, Damning with faint praise, Eating your own dog food, Flogging a dead horse, Get a life (idiom), Jump the gun, Kick the bucket, Kill or be killed, Live and Let Live, Reinventing the wheel, Speak of the devil, Taking the piss, Tilting at windmills, Toe the line and, maybe relevantly, Shut up.
Category:English idioms.
Gregkaye (talk) 08:57, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support per conciseness and consistency. 10 points to the nominator. Red Slash 18:43, 31 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 04:17, 1 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just a thought – how about "Calling a spade a spade"? —BarrelProof (talk) 19:55, 2 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • My opinion is that the page should be moved but that the title should be Calling a spade a spade—currently a redirect to this article—in accordance with WP:NOUN. (Some, but not all, of the examples cited by the nom that are in verb form could also do with a move to gerund form.) Deor (talk) 12:23, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @BarrelProof:, @Deor:, Re: ..ing I just did a couple of searches on view of: commonname:
"call a spade a spade" gets "About 10,200,000 results"
"calling a spade a spade" gets "About 1,860,000 results"
I think that's about 6:1.
also i think it might be good for inter user communication to have the phrase "call a spade a spade" readily available. Gregkaye (talk) 15:24, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The article is not about the act of calling a spade a spade; it is about the term most commonly rendered "call a spade a spade". The gerund form is not warranted. —  AjaxSmack  03:10, 8 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Possible error in the article[edit]

Matt Colvin, a scholar of ancient Greek, says that the article depends on the wrong quote. https://colvinism.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/call-a-spade-a-spade-miley-cyrus-and-the-ancient-greeks/ 69.118.49.33 (talk) 01:21, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was also wondering about that Erasmus quote, since the blog post uses the grammatically incorrect 'then' instead of 'than', two commonly confused words on the English-speaking Internet. 60.241.236.92 (talk) 04:58, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

More needed on ethnic slur[edit]

The following points probably need to be made in the article, at least if somebody can find RS citations to back them up:

  • 1) As an ethnic slur, it can refer to blacks in general, not simply African-Americans. In Britain, it would typically be used to refer to British blacks, not American ones.
  • 2) It is not just avoided by the politically correct. It is also actively used by others as a racist joke (usually expressed as "I believe in calling a spade a spade", usually accompanied by a smile or laugh to make it clear that the usage is not an innocent non-racist one).
    • 2b) As a result, avoiding it arguably makes a lot of sense and is NOT a case of 'political correctness gone mad' (the article doesn't say it's such a case, but some readers might gain that impression, especially as they are not currently told about the racist joke).
  • 3) It would help if the article suggested 'politically correct' alternatives (perhaps "calling a shovel a shovel" ???), though I don't know whether there are any RS offering any (and also whether or not the alternative then tends to become a new ethnic slur because everybody knows it means 'spade').Tlhslobus (talk) 06:48, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wikipedia is intended to describe things as they are, not as they should be. It is not intended for righting great wrongs, especially if said great wrongs don't actually exist. If you have sources that support your claim of it's use as a racist joke, or that black British people being referred to as "spade", you're welcome to add that information. AFAIK, the "spade" pejorative is specific to the U.S. For the British, it's a garden worktool or one of the four suits of cards.Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. Kleuske (talk) 11:09, 15 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

More Needed on Ethnic Slur II[edit]

Thoughts on the above: 1. As an ethnic slur, it can refer to blacks in general not simply African-Americans. [Your next sentence is confusing] In Britain it would typically be used to refer to British blacks, not American ones. My push back on this is, part one of your idea "blacks in general, not simply African-Americans" vs In Britain it "the useage of the phrase" would typically be used to refer to British Blacks, not American ones. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zerostatetechnologies (talk • contribs) 08:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Source? Kleuske (talk) 09:51, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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