NABOKV-L post 0011777, Mon, 5 Sep 2005 19:26:48 -0700

----- Forwarded message from chaiselongue@earthlink.net -----
Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 20:25:35 -0800
From: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
Reply-To: Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: sexual references in spades & Greek figs - a Desiderian error
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum

Further digging reveals that there is sexual innuendo at work:


to call a spade a spade - to use simple language - the expression is not an
ethnic slur, which instead is derived from 'black as the ace of spades',
first appearing only in 1928. The expression 'to call a spade a spade' is
much older, dating back to at least 423BC, when it appeared in Aristophanes'
play The Clouds (he also wrote the play The Birds, in 414BC, which provided
the source of the 'Cloud Cuckoo Land' expression).

'To call a spade a spade' can be traced back to the original Greek
expression 'ta syka syka, ten skaphen de skaphen onomasein' - 'to call a fig
a fig, a trough a trough' - which was a sexual allusion, in keeping with the
original Greek meaning which was 'to use crude language'. At some stage
between the 14th and 16th centuries the Greek word for trough 'skaphe:' was
mis-translated within the expression into the Latin for spade - 'ligo' -
(almost certainly because Greek for a 'digging tool' was 'skapheion' - the
words 'skaphe:' and 'skapheion' have common roots, which is understandable
since both are hollowed-out concave shapes).

This crucial error was believed to have been committed by Desiderius Erasmus
(Dutch humanist, 1466-1536), when translating work by Plutarch. The
translation into the English 'spade' is believed to have happened in 1542 by
Nicolas Udall when he translated Erasmus's Latin version of the expression.
While the origin of the expression is not racial or
'non-politically-correct', the current usage, by association with the
perceived meaning of 'spade', most certainly is potentially racially
sensitive and potentially non-PC, just as other similarly non-politically
correct expressions have come to be so, eg 'nitty-gritty', irrespective of
their actual origins. (Developed from Mark Israel's notes on this subject.)

----- End forwarded message -----