Call a spade a spade

Posted by Bruce Kahl on July 27, 2000

In Reply to: Call a spade a spade posted by Gary Martin on July 27, 2000

: : What is the derivation of this phrase: call a spade a spade. Some folks in the office think this is derogatory and racist. I'm thinking it comes from the construction trades.

: : any ideas

: : thanks

: Sam,

: This phrase goes back to Greek text at least as early as 300BC and doesn't have racist origins. John Knox introduced it into English when translating a Latin text by Erasmus. "I have learned to call wickedness by its own terms: A fig is a fig and a spade a spade."

: My own origins are so humble I call a spade a shovel.

: Gary

"To call a spade a spade" not only predates slavery in North America by quite a bit but harks all the way back to the Ancient Greeks, occurring in the work of, among others, the playwright Aristophanes, and is still commonly heard in modern Greek. The original phrase seems to have been "to call a fig a fig; to call a kneading trough a kneading trough," applied to someone who spoke exceedingly frankly. Evidently, when the phrase was first translated from Greek in the Renaissance, the Greek word for "trough" was confused with the Greek for "spade," and thus the modern version was born. The "spade" referred to in the phrase, incidentally, was the digging implement, and not the black character on playing cards that underlies the racial epithet.