When Racism Slips Into Everyday Speech

[tblue37]

47. Re: "call a spade a spade"

An earlier expression of the notion, albeit in different form to that which we now use, comes from Nicolas Udall's 'Apophthegmes, that is to saie, prompte saiynges. First gathered by Erasmus' - translated in 1542 <emphasis added>:

"Philippus aunswered, that the Macedonians wer feloes of no fyne witte in their termes but altogether grosse, clubbyshe, and rusticall, as they whiche had not the witte to calle a spade by any other name then a spade."

This refers back to Plutarch's Apophthegmata.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/call-a-spade-a-spade.html

IOW, the Macedonians were so rustic and unrefined that they did not have a varied or sophisticated vocabulary. Instead of having a wealth of refined words to choose from, they had nothing to call their ordinary tools by except for their ordinary (i.e., vulgar) names.

Eventually, "calling a spade a spade" became a claim of integrity, when seeming to be a "man of the people" rather than a member of the elite became a desirable mask for those seeking the favor of the populace (to garner votes, for example), claiming to be an honest, plain-spoken man, one who "calls a spade a spade," rather than one of those "pointy-headed intellectuals" or one of those "nattering nabobs of negativism" who have all sorts of fancy-pants words for beating around the bush or snowing people with obscure language in order to confuse them and to pull a fast one on them.

(W's fake ranch, his fake Texas accent, and his pretense of always having to clear brush were all attempts to come across as such a plain man of the people rather than as the spoiled, well-connected rich kid he really was. Notice how his campaign used "intellectual" as a slur against both Gore and Kerry, as though being smart and educated were shameful. Of course, W had served his time at Ivy League schools, though his Yale undergrad degree and his Harvard MBA were almost certainly based on "gentleman's Cs" rather than on his academic performance.)