Appeler un chat un chat
(to call a cat a cat)
meaning
To call a spade a spade
It is always best to speak carefully when you speak in a language which is not your own. Anything you say can easily be misconstrued by the other person who has a different background, a different understanding, a different frame of reference. So it is perhaps also best never to go as far as d'appeler un chat un chat = to call a spade a spade.
Apparently the phrase was introduced into the English language for the first time in 1542 in Nicolas Udall's translation of Erasmus, Apophthegmes:
Philippus aunswered, that the Macedonians wer feloes of no fyne witte in their termes but altogether grosse, clubbyshe, and rusticall, as they whiche had not the witte to calle a spade by any other name then a spade.
It is evident that the word spade refers to the instrument used to move earth, a very common tool. The same word was used in England and in Holland, Erasmus' country of origin.
or
Should you appellez un chat un chat and you find yourself in that same big hole, get your foot off the cat's tail!
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