I wasn’t talking about you. I meant that,if the coworker was ignorant enough to use a phrase he thought was offensive even if it wasn’t and that is bad intent on his part.
Of course, what we have here is just a public declaration of ignorance.
Coworker wants to come up with a phrase to describe a situation.
The only one that comes to mind is a “racist” in his own mind.
He decides to use it.
He apologizes for it in advance.
He thinks he may have been racist even though no one else sees it that way.
What if your coworker believed there was a dictator so evil and so menacing in history that he is known only in history by his first name: “Jack”? What if your coworker goes around emphasizing he going to “jack” up the prices and “jack” someone over. Would it be really evil if he thought that way but no one else understood it that way at all? If you knew this and he told you not to “jack” him around, would that change your reaction?
Cardinal - that seems like the definition; the real question is the origin. It derives from “shooting your wad” (duh!); i.e., ejaculating and having none left for another go for a while…as I said, crudely sexual…
Shagnasty - yep, there was a little taint to his action, now that I think about it. I guess that might’ve been what stuck in my head…I would change your analogy a round. What if somebody thought a stupid nonsense phrase that means nothing, i.e., “tethering the blimp” was crudely sexual, even though no one else does - if they knew they could get away with using it (because no one else, frankly, cared) but they knew it was “dirty” is it okay to use in a social situations where more polished or professional demeanor is required?
With either your or my analogy, I am inclined to think No - hence the taint. I wonder if this would be a good question for the Ethicist in the NYTimes Weekly Magazine?
The problem that I have with a sexual origin is the fact that I know of know other context in which “wad” means “semen.” I guess it might be a corruption of “shoot one’s load,” clearly a sexual reference, but that, to me, seems like an unlikely corruption.
It would seem to me that “shooting a wad of bills” (spending all one’s money) would provide a more consistent origin.
(I have also seen speculation that it came from the era of muzzleloading weapons, when a wad of material was used to hold the lead ball in place. The supposed etymology was that if one placed the wad in the barrel and forgot the bullet, “shooting one’s wad” would be the equivalent of shooting blanks. However, I have never seen that meaning attached to the phrase and I suspect that it is a badly rendered folk etymology.)
Unfortunately, my abridged Partridge does not even include the phrase and I have not found it in my edition of the OED.
I think you might be being somewhat niggardly with the facts in casting that phrase purely in racial terms. How is “Black as the ace of spades” an across the board racial term? The ace of spades is black, and I’ve heard it applied to inanimate (black) objects before. And even if it is used in reference to a black person, would it be considered more descriptive or more of a slur, or does that depend on context?
1) Coworker wants to come up with a phrase to describe a situation.
Okay.
2), 3), & 4)
Wrong. Try this:
One pops into mind and he blurts it out.
As soon as he hears himself say it, he believes it was a faux pas.
He therefore apologizes right after he says it (read the OP).
5) He thinks he may have been racist even though no one else sees it that way.
No, according to the OP he thought it was (not “may have been”) racist. And while he’s obviously misinformed, I don’t see the relevance of “even though no one else sees it that way.” We have no way of knowing how he thinks anyone else sees it, nor any reason to think he would see it as racist if he knew that no one else agreed, nor for that matter any evidence that he’s the only one who takes it as racist.
Tomndebb - I think you’re probably right - “shot my wad” started off with a muzzle-load gun origin that evolved to mean something sexual in the early 1900’s. This thread on a word geek site has a pretty informed-looking discussion that reaches that conclusion near as I can tell…
As for my co-worker’s mindset as the little episode that started this thread played out - I haven’t asked him further and don’t intend to. I can see there being a difference between thinking the phrase is racist and trying to apologize his way to PC-ness vs. blurting it and then mistakenly deciding there is a need to recover, but the distinction between the two isn’t really the purpose of my OP…
I have heard “Black as the ace of spades” used to refer to a person’s race. More importantly, the OED lists the use of “spade” meaning a Black person as deriving from the card suit:
This is listed with the definition of spade = card suit, a sign of common origin.
BTW, “spade” in cards does not derive from “spade” = shovel:
The “natural association” means that people tend to think there’s a connection, even though the word come from elsewhere.
Perhaps “shot one’s bolt” comes from the practice of crossbow fire. A crossbow packs a punch but it takes some time to re-set (crank, wind, cock) for another shot. The metaphor is therefore very similar to muzzle-loading rifles and cannons, where you have one good shot, and then a delay to re-load before another shot can be attempted.
My understanding of the “shot his wad” term – and I don’t think one can seriously question whether it originiated from muzzle-loading gun technology – is that, although a wad is fired with every shot (one loads powder, wad, ball), when one is out of lead balls (ammunition) or when one is otherwise reduced to the last extremity, one fires the wad itself without a ball (either from panic, or in a mindless frenzy of loading and shooting as fast as possible, or in a last act of defiance).
