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Sep 23, 2013 · Case in point, the expression "to call a spade a spade." For almost half a millennium, the phrase has served as a demand to "tell it like it is." It is only in the past century that the phrase ...
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What is Code Switch? Code Switch is a multi-racial,...
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August 23, 2014 • A word of encouragement or demand in...
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Apr 16, 2023 · spade (n.2) black figure on playing cards, 1590s, probably from Italian spade, plural of spada "the ace of spades," literally "sword, spade," from Latin spatha "broad, flat weapon or tool," from Greek spathe "broad blade" (see spade (n.1)). So called for the shape, though what the shape was exactly meant to represent has been debated.
Jul 21, 2018 · The phrase to call a spade a spade means to speak plainly without avoiding unpleasant or embarrassing issues. (The synonymous French phrase is appeler un chat un chat, to call a cat a cat.) The English phrase originated in the fact that the Dutch humanist and scholar Desiderius Erasmus (circa 1469-1536) misunderstood the Greek word σκάφη ...
Nov 15, 2011 · To call a spade a spade "use blunt language" (1540s) translates a Greek proverb (known to Lucian), ten skaphen skaphen legein "to call a bowl a bowl," but Erasmus mistook Gk. skaphe "trough, bowl" for a derivative of the stem of skaptein "to dig," and the mistake has stuck. The item before that in etymonline mentions . spade (2) ...
Call a spade a spade" is a figurative expression. It refers to calling something "as it is" [ 1 ] —that is, by its right or proper name, without " beating about the bush ", but rather speaking truthfully , frankly, and directly about a topic, even to the point of bluntness or rudeness , and even if the subject is considered coarse, impolite, or unpleasant.
5 days ago · spade (plural spades) (card games) A playing card marked with the symbol ♠. I've got only one spade in my hand. (offensive, ethnic slur) A black person. 1929, Wallace Thurman, The Blacker the Berry, New York: Collier Books, published 1970, →ISBN, page 161: And as for a divorce, I know plenty spades right here in Harlem get married any time ...
Nov 24, 2001 · Though they’re the same word historically — both derive from Greek spathe for a blade or paddle — the one you dig with came into Old English from an intermediate Germanic source, while the card sense arrived via Italian spade, the plural of spada, a sword. An oddity is that to call a spade a spade is a mistranslation. The original was a ...
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