In article ,
"michael adams" writes:
|
| Digital dyslexia must put you at a marked disadvantage as a
| mathematician I'd have thought.
|
| You have my deepest sympathy.

You're trolling AGAIN. Please desist. Or at least be a bit more
subtle.

| I posted the following - (to save you wearing your fingers any nearer
| to the bone I should perhaps add that "unassailable Internet authority"
| is intended with tongue firmly in cheek)

You also posted the following. I have included enough references
that you should be able to track the original down. If you read what
you wrote, you will see that you claimed 1589.


Newsgroups: uk.rec.gardening
Subject: ****ing on compost
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2006 11:12:15 +0100
Organization: is pointless
Lines: 57
Message-ID:
X-Trace: individual.net /R+Snevw4cEgLopuinQsUgxotzXfsF9lbdw5xDlf1aev+PmJVj

"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "michael adams" contains these words:



You have no choice but to call things figs or troughs or spades.

Or is the point that figs, troughs, and spades, are euphemisms for
something else ?

Fig certainly is ; it was a vulgar term for female sex organ, at least
500 years ago, in Italian, Spanish and English. "I don't give a fig" did
not refer to fruit, and the modesty "fig leaf" on nudes was a double
entendre.

Spade = black person.

Nowadays yes. But I doubt if that was the case in 1589 when it
was first used in English. That usage came from playing cards
I believe.

In fact I imagine all three were sexual ephemisms.

The "spade" was what you used in the "trough".

The statement - " I call a spade a spade" is rather
paradoxical.

As it should really be "I call the male sexual organ a spade"
- because I use euphemisms.

Which is precisely the opposite of what's being claimed.