spade cat (was Re: "like" and "as if")

[Wilson Gray]

On Jun 24, 2005, at 12:08 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      spade cat (was Re: "like" and "as if")
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> At 12:38 AM -0400 6/24/05, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> On Jun 23, 2005, at 9:31 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>>> Mid-sentential examples from _Mojo Navigator_:
>>>
>>> -----
>>> At ten o'clock they started to serve drinks and the older crowd would
>>> come
>>> in, and like they=92re white-collar drunks and all...a bad scene.
>>> ("Big Brother & the Holding Company", Sep. 1966)
>>> -----
>>> The only other blues clubs are in the South Side, and like you just
>>> don't
>>> go down there unless you have a spade
>>
>> FWIW, Richie Havens is the only spade that I've ever heard use the
>> word
>> "spade" to mean "spade": "I bet you didn't know that there were spade
>> cowboys, did you?" A rhetorical question asked on a TV show as he was
>> about to sing some Western ditty.
>>
>> Then there was the time that I asked a friend at UC Davis please not
>> to
>> refer to spades as "spades," especially when she was talking to a
>> spade, at least. She replied that, at her no-doubt lily-white high
>> school in her no-doubt lily-white town somewhere in the
>> Northern-California wine country, it was customary to refer to spades
>> as "spades." After pondering this for over 35 years, I still haven't
>> been able to winkle out the logical connection between my request and
>> her reply to it. Clearly, talking to her was like talking to a wall,
>> to
>> coin a phrase. She just didn't get it.
>>
>> -Wilson Gray
>
> Which brings me to one of my favorite orthographic eggcorns,
> preserved from October 1995 when we were in the kitty-cat market.
> This classified ad appeared in our local throw-away weekly:
>
>       SR. CITIZEN KITTY needs loving home, spade, all shots, healthy.
>       I've been a good kitty & promise to be a purr-fect pet.  Please
>       call ____.  Love Kitty.
>
> There are 130 google hits for "spade cat", and while some have the
> hipster meaning in mind--
>
> A spade cat from Port Washington joined the Quarry and tried to tell
> us what was on his mind. He was a fairly good singer...
>
> If Barton had been a spade cat they would have thrown his ass into
> jail before you could say Bull Conners.
>
> --many clearly involve the eggcornish reading:
>
> Like the difference between the behavior of a spade cat and an unspade
> cat.
>
> I still cant quite beleive that a portrayal of a recently spade cat
> could be such great comedy material
>
> My female spade cat has a problem peeing on my bath rugs.
>
> (Actually, after coping recently with a (male) cat who had *no*
> problem peeing on my bath rugs, I wouldn't complain about a cat
> having a problem doing so.)
>
> Larry
>

We have two kitties. Given that they're black females, I guess you
could say that they're both spayed and spade! <har! har!>

-Wilson