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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)
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)
![]() | This page has been
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Wiktionary. The article has content that is useful at Wiktionary. Therefore the article can be found at either here or here ( logs 1 logs 2.) Note: This means that the article has been copied to the Wiktionary Transwiki namespace for evaluation and formatting. It does not mean that the article is in the Wiktionary main namespace, or that it has been removed from Wikipedia's. Furthermore, the Wiktionarians might delete the article from Wiktionary if they do not find it to be appropriate for the Wiktionary. Removing this tag will usually trigger CopyToWiktionaryBot to re-transwiki the entry. This article should have been removed from Category:Copy to Wiktionary and should not be re-added there. |
-- CopyToWiktionaryBot 02:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
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 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)
"...[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)
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)
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.
-- 63.139.174.185 ( talk) 05:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Page moved: per discussion Ground Zero | t 02:04, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
The following points probably need to be made in the article, at least if somebody can find RS citations to back them up:
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)
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![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
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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)
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)
![]() | This page has been
transwikied to
Wiktionary. The article has content that is useful at Wiktionary. Therefore the article can be found at either here or here ( logs 1 logs 2.) Note: This means that the article has been copied to the Wiktionary Transwiki namespace for evaluation and formatting. It does not mean that the article is in the Wiktionary main namespace, or that it has been removed from Wikipedia's. Furthermore, the Wiktionarians might delete the article from Wiktionary if they do not find it to be appropriate for the Wiktionary. Removing this tag will usually trigger CopyToWiktionaryBot to re-transwiki the entry. This article should have been removed from Category:Copy to Wiktionary and should not be re-added there. |
-- CopyToWiktionaryBot 02:29, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
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 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)
"...[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)
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)
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.
-- 63.139.174.185 ( talk) 05:34, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: Page moved: per discussion Ground Zero | t 02:04, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
The following points probably need to be made in the article, at least if somebody can find RS citations to back them up:
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)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Call a spade a spade. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{
Sourcecheck}}
).
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 04:29, 13 November 2016 (UTC)