(~4 minutes to read)

The art of digging is dying. No, I’m not looking for a gravedigging pun here. (Actually, I did look, but couldn’t find one.) Long considered men’s work, most men could handle a spade and a shovel quite well even if they didn’t labour for a living, because so many families grew their own vegetables. Many women would have become expert diggers during the Second World War, when most of the men were away fighting.

But since the war, there’s been a decline in the need to be handy with a shovel and—based on personal observation—a consequent decline in shovel handiness.

Using a Spade to Shovel

One particularly sad sight I see is people using spades to do shovelling work, and vice versa. It’s hard work just watching them! Try eating peas with your knife (without using honey!)—it’s a very similar concept. While calling a spade a spade is all well and good, using a spade as a spade is a very good habit indeed.

Say I were to dig a hole—maybe with grave-like dimensions: I would use a spade to cut the dirt and remove the clod, and I would use a shovel to scoop up the loose material and throw it out of the hole.

One reason that I think the phrase “to call a spade a spade” resonates with us is that there is confusion over what is a spade and what is a shovel. Until I wrote this article, it was simple for me; spades cut and move, and shovels scoop. Even dictionaries bear this simplistic view out: Webster’s describes a shovel as “a broad blade or scoop”—the Oxford Dictionary mentions upturned sides. But I now realize that my dad didn’t teach me all the facts of life. (Actually, he didn’t even teach me “those” facts of life—I had to work it out for myself. But I digress.) The fact of life he omitted to tell me is that some shovels are hybrids, in that they both dig and scoop. As with many hybrids though, effectiveness is compromised.

This is such a hybrid, and yes, it’s called a “shovel”. Some models are even spade-shaped (as in the playing card spade), yet they’re still called “shovels”. It’s true that you can buy snow shovels, barn shovels, and so on that really are scoopy things and therefore qualify as shovels, but ask for a shovel in North America and this is what you’ll get. It’s neither broad nor scoop-shaped and ipso facto not a real shovel.

Sporks and the Like

Most of us have seen sporks, even if we haven’t test-driven one. Less well-known are the spife and the knork. I won’t insult your intelligence by explaining their hybridity. But the spife seems to me to be the ideal weapon to use in the fight against the blatant abuse of the English language vis-à-vis the North American “shovel”.

Given that a shovel scoops and a spade cuts and moves, their culinary equivalents would quite naturally be the spoon and knife respectively.
If that is the case, and given that the spoon-knife hybrid is a spife, then perhaps this hybrid between a shovel and a spade (which I have to confess is quite useful in some situations, unlike the spife) should be referred to as a “spavel”.

Let’s Call a Spade a Boat

In today’s PC minefield of inappropriate metaphors and euphemisms, some mistakenly regard the phrase “to call a spade a spade” as a racist remark. But according to World Wide Words,  it’s the result of a translation error.

The phrase has its origins in the Greek language of a couple of millennia ago. The Greek writer Plutarch suggested that the Macedonians were too unsubtle a people to do anything other than use blunt words. He used the word skaphe —a word that means some kind of vessel, such as a bowl, basin, trough or boat. Apparently a mediaeval scholar misread it during translation to Latin, and the mistake was perpetuated when the Tudor-era playwright Nicholas Udall translated it into English. (Many thanks to Michael Quinion at WWW.)

Bam! Now we’re calling a bowl a spade.

If that translation error hadn’t been made, the phrase would be “to call a bowl a bowl,” and all that confusion with derogatory terms for black people could have been avoided. Mind you, I’m sure there are people out there who use “bowl” as a derogatory term for some minority or other, and if there aren’t, it’s only a matter of time…

Let’s Call a Spade a Mukluk (or an Oyster, or a Cupcake)

At the end of that very well-worn cliched day, it doesn’t matter what you call things as long as everyone knows what you’re talking about.
Mind you, over time, the meanings of words shift, and it could well be caused at least in part by misuse that becomes accepted use. By way of illustration, try looking up the original meanings of words such as flirt, guy, gay, and naughty.

So, anyway. This weekend, me and my mukluk are digging up the edge of the lawn so I can bury a vertical weed barrier. I’m using both a cutty cutty mukluk as well as a scoopy scoopy mukluk.

I sure hope the weather holds out—I hate digging in the yard when it’s raining shovels and spades.