From the short story The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, Collier's Weekly, January 28, 1933. Used with slightly different wording in the musical Guys and Dolls -- both the 1950 stage and the 1955 film versions.
“She was getting pally with a scally in the alley
Giving head for gear
She called a spade a spade
Got slit from ear to ear
I showed no decorum
Spilled my heart out on the forum
Like a snapshot of the most tragic day
Carl is kept sedated, for the frontman elevated
While McGee does all he can to ruin my band and keep me out the way
In this industry of fools, musclemen and ghouls
If you're not a puppet or a muppet then you might as well call it a day
The truth gets so distorted
The wall scrapings get snorted
I'm welcome back if I give up crack
But you gave me my first pipe anyway”
"Gang of Gin" (never released owing to threats of legal action by pop mogul Alan McGee)
Lyrics and poetry
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Pete Doherty 86
English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist 1979Related quotes
“I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me "spade."”
Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2
“I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.”
Unidentified fragment 545 K (K = T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta, 3 vols. (Leipzig 1880/8)), as translated in Menander: The Principal Fragments (1921) by Francis Greenleaf Allinson.
“These Macedonians," said he, "are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade.”
39 Philip
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders
"" ("Walking on a wave's chicane" are the official lyrics, but these are often heard and quoted as "Walking on a wave she came")
Eldorado, A Symphony (1974)
Context: Midnight on the water
I saw the ocean's daughter
Walking on a wave's chicane
Staring as she called my name And I can't get it out of my head
No, I can't get it out of my head
Now my old world is gone for dead
'Cos I can't get it out of my head
“We believe that failing to call a spade a spade is not scientific.”
Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 50
Rumour Has It, written by Adele and Ryan Tedder
Song lyrics, 21 (2011)
I’m positive of that.
Part One, Two
The Dud Avocado (1958)