To speak frankly and bluntly, to be quite explicit. The term dates from the sixteenth century, but may go back even to Greek and Roman times. One translation of Cicero’s Ad Familiares reads,
“Here is your Stoic disquisition . . . ‘the wise man will call a spade a spade.’” There are numerous repetitions throughout the 1500s, such as John Tav- erner’s (“Whiche call . . . a mattok nothing els but a mattok, and a spade a spade,” Garden of Wysdome, 1539), and later uses by Ben Jonson, Robert Bur- ton, Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain, among others. A cliché since the nineteenth century, it acquired a more sinister meaning when spade became an offensive slang word for a black person.
“Here is your Stoic disquisition . . . ‘the wise man will call a spade a spade.’” There are numerous repetitions throughout the 1500s, such as John Tav- erner’s (“Whiche call . . . a mattok nothing els but a mattok, and a spade a spade,” Garden of Wysdome, 1539), and later uses by Ben Jonson, Robert Bur- ton, Jonathan Swift, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain, among others. A cliché since the nineteenth century, it acquired a more sinister meaning when spade became an offensive slang word for a black person.
0 comentarios:
Publicar un comentario