"call a spade a spade"

[Katharine Grate]

I don't know that I've actually heard it, either, in the past years -- outside of literature.  But just a few weeks ago I was teaching my kindergarteners to play cards and teaching them the four different styles of pips.  When it came time to say, "And these are called 'spades'" a little part of me cringed as I said the word.
I immediatly told them spades means little shovels and we talked about how they do look a bit like upside down shovels.

hearts, diamonds, shovels and clovers??????


As a 73 year old Midwesterner, I haven't heard "spade" as a racial term
for at least 30 years.  Growing up in Chicago it was an occasional slur,
but hadn't even thought of the racial definition for many, many years.
Sounds almost quaint, somewhat like the slang in a Raymond Chandler novel.

Charles Doyle wrote:
For some speakers of American English (by no means all of them), the word "spade" has lost all applications except for use as a derogatory racial designation.

On the reanalysis of the proverbial phrase "call a spade a spade," one might consult Wolfgang Mieder's monograph _Call a Spade a Spade: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur_ (NY: Peter Lang, 2002).

--Charlie






I don't know that I've actually heard it, either, in the past years -- outside of literature.  But just a few weeks ago I was teaching my kindergarteners to play cards and teaching them the four different styles of pips.  When it came time to say, "And these are called 'spades'" a little part of me cringed as I said the word.
I immediatly told them spades means little shovels and we talked about how they do look a bit like upside down shovels.

hearts, diamonds, shovels and clovers??????


As a 73 year old Midwesterner, I haven't heard "spade" as a racial term
for at least 30 years.  Growing up in Chicago it was an occasional slur,
but hadn't even thought of the racial definition for many, many years.
Sounds almost quaint, somewhat like the slang in a Raymond Chandler novel.

Charles Doyle wrote:
For some speakers of American English (by no means all of them), the word "spade" has lost all applications except for use as a derogatory racial designation.

On the reanalysis of the proverbial phrase "call a spade a spade," one might consult Wolfgang Mieder's monograph _Call a Spade a Spade: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur_ (NY: Peter Lang, 2002).

--Charlie

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org