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Spade

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Why not call a spade a spade? Do not palliate sins by euphemisms.

We call a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools but folly,”—Shakespeare: Coriolanus, ii. 1.


“I have learned to call wickedness by its own terms: a fig a fig, and a spade a spude,”—John Knox.

Spades in cards. A corruption of the Spanish spados, pikes or swords, called by the French piques (pikes).

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Sour Grapes
Sour Grapeism
South-Sea Scheme or Bubble
Southampton Street (London)
Southampton’s Wise Sons
Southern Gate of the Sun
Soutras
Sovereign
Sow (to rhyme with “now”)
Spa or Spa Water
Spade
Spadish Language (In)
Spafields (London)
Spagiric Art
Spagiric Food
Spagnaletto [the little Spaniard]
Spaie
Spain
Span New
Spaniel
Spanish Blades