Firewater Friday - Let's call a spade a spade

To call a spade a spade is a way to describe something as it really is.

These days it seems like everything and everybody is called a racist for any little old thing.   I guess it’s simply the way I think but it never occurred to me that this phrase . . . ‘call a spade a spade’ . . . would be considered racially derogatory.  And the fact is . . . it’s NOT.  Or, at least it wasn’t . . .

 

The expression is thousands of years old.  Back when spades were implements to dig the earth and not the symbol on a deck of cards or . . . whatever else.

The original saying derives from the ancient Greek idiom ‘ta syka syka, te:n

skaphe:n de skaphe:n onomasein’  which translates "to call a fig a fig, a trough a

trough".    

Far from being an ethic slur, its thought that this expression was initially a sexual reference . . . a fig and trough being symbolic for . . . well, I don’t think I need to paint you a picture.

Anyhoo . . .

Interestingly, sometime during the Renaissance, ‘trough’ got mistranslated as ‘spade’.    It’s not surprising, considering the ancient Greek for these words are fairly similar . . . skaphe = trough / skapheion = digging tool.

"Spade" in the sense of "negro" is not recorded until 1928 and comes from the color of the playing card symbol, via the phrase ‘black as the ace of spades’.

 

Frankly, I’m sick of tippy-toeing around and tired of political correctness. I think people are way too overly sensitive.  Buck up and get a stiff upper lip . . . every little ol’ thing is not an attack on some other thing.  It’s just not.  Sometimes a spade is just that . . . a spade.

That is all . . . moving on . . . 

Sweet Cream Soda


2 Shots Pinnacle Cake
2  Shots  Pinnacle Whipped
8 oz. Club Soda


Mix in a glass filled with ice and garnish with a cherry.