I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.

The sentiment is attributed to Menander (4th–3rd c. BCE), the Athenian playwright of New Comedy, but it survives only as a later-reported fragment rather than in a complete, securely contextualized scene. Ancient Greek writers and compilers preserved many of Menander’s lines as gnomic sayings, detached from their original dramatic situations. The proverb later became widely known in European languages through Renaissance and early modern collections of adages and moral sentences, where it was treated as a maxim of plain speaking. Because the line circulates chiefly as a standalone fragment, the specific play, speaker, and occasion within Menander’s work cannot be identified with confidence.

The phrase champions frankness and verbal precision: to “call a fig a fig” is to name things directly, without euphemism, flattery, or strategic ambiguity. Its force lies in opposing social conventions that soften or disguise uncomfortable truths. In comedic and moral contexts alike, the maxim implies that clarity is a kind of integrity—language should match reality, even when bluntness risks offense. The pairing of ordinary objects underscores the ideal of plain, everyday speech rather than ornate rhetoric. As a proverb, it has been used both to praise honesty and to justify brusqueness, raising the question of when candor is virtue and when it becomes needless harshness.