call a spade a spade

 

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to call a spade a spade

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• call a spade a spade and a shovel a shovel
• call a shovel a shovel (rare)
• call a spade a spade, not a big spoon
• call a spoon a “spoon” and a spade a “spade” (rare)

A mistaken translation of Ancient Greek τὰ σῦκα σῦκα, τὴν σκάφην δὲ σκάφην ὀνομάσων (tà sûka sûka, tḕn skáphēn dè skáphēn onomásōn, “calling figs figs, and a trough a trough”). The word σκάφη (skáphē, “trough”) was mistranslated by the Renaissance scholar Desiderius Erasmus as σκαφείον (skapheíon, “digging tool”).

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call a spade a spade (third-person singular simple present calls a spade a spade, present participle calling a spade a spade, simple past and past participle called a spade a spade)

1. (idiomatic) To put it bluntly, to be outspoken; to speak the truth, to say things as they really are.
   • 2005, Bright Eyes, When the President Talks to God:

     Maybe God just calls a spade a spade, when the president talks to God.

• Some take offence at this expression because one sense of spade is an ethnic slur for a black person. However, this expression long predates the racial use of spade, and is etymologically unrelated: this expression refers to the digging implement, while the racial slur derives from the playing card suit.

• call a spade a shovel
• call it as one sees it
• tell it like it is
• beat around the bush, beat about the bush
• pull one's punches

• spadish

• Michael Quinion (2004) “Call a spade a spade”, in Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, →ISBN.
• Edward Spenser (1881) "prone to call a spoon a "spoon" and a spade a "spade,"" in Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Settlement of Baltimore, page 117, King Brothers, Baltimore