
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.
"Gang of Gin" (never released owing to threats of legal action by pop mogul Alan McGee)
Lyrics and poetry
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.
“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)