| 单词 | call a spade a spade |
| 释义 | call a spade a spade to speak frankly and usu bluntly ‘When I see a spade I call it a spade.’ ‘I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade.’ — Oscar Wilde [based on a mistranslation of a phrase in Plutarch (1c–2c AD), who used the Greek word skaphe meaning ‘bowl’ or ‘basin’, which Erasmus evidently confused with skapheion, derived from skaphein ‘to dig’, turning it into Latin as ligo meaning ‘mattock’; this in turn was translated by the dramatist and scholar Nicholas Udall (1542) into English as ‘spade’]Main Entry: spade |
| 随便看 |
英语词典包含66266条英英释义在线翻译词条，基本涵盖了全部常用单词的英英翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。