OTOT Kev-- Snack owes no one an apology....
"to call a spade a spade" is NOT an ethnic slur.
It derives from an ancient Greek expression: _ta syka syka, te:n skaphe:n de skaphe:n onomasein_ = "to call a fig a fig, a trough a trough". This is first recorded in Aristophanes' play _The Clouds_(423 B.C.), was used by Menander and Plutarch, and is still currentin modern Greek. There has been a slight shift in meaning: in ancient times the phrase was often used pejoratively, to denote a rude person who spoke his mind tactlessly; but it now, like the English phrase, has an exclusively positive connotation. It is possible that both the fig and the trough were originally sexual symbols.
In the Renaissance, Erasmus confused Plutarch's "trough"
(_skaphe:_) with the Greek word for "digging tool" (_skapheion_;the two words are etymologically connected, a trough being something that is hollowed out) and rendered it in Latin as _ligo_. Thence it was translated into English in 1542 by Nicholas Udall in his translation of Erasmus's version as "to call a spade [...] a spade". (_Bartlett's Familiar Quotations_ perpetuates Erasmus' error by mistranslating _skaphe:_ as "spade" three times under Menander.) "To call a spade a bloody shovel" is not recorded until 1919. "Spade" in the sense of "Negro" is not recorded until 1928. (It
comes from the colour of the playing card symbol, via the phrase "black as the ace of spades".)
LadyX
