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

[Laurence Horn]

>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

We ended up choosing two female kittens from a different litter
advertised in the same paper, a tabby and an an all-black who will
turn 10 this summer, and my reaction was that we could save some
money at the vets' because they would only need to operate on one of
the two kitties--the other one was spade when we got her.