spoon

英文词源

spoon

spoon: [OE] The word spoon originally denoted ‘chip of wood’. Such chips typically being slightly concave, they could be used for conveying liquid, and by the 14th century spoon, through Scandinavian influence, was being used in its present-day sense. It goes back ultimately to the same prehistoric base as produced English spade, and its Old Norse relative spánn ‘chip’ lies behind the span of spick and span. The late 19th-century slang use ‘court, make love, bill and coo’ comes from a late 18th-century application of the noun to a ‘shallow’ or foolish person.
=> spade

spoon (n.)

Old English spon "chip, sliver, shaving, splinter of wood," from Proto-Germanic *spe-nu- (cognates: Old Norse spann, sponn "chip, splinter," Swedish spån "a wooden spoon," Old Frisian spon, Middle Dutch spaen, Dutch spaan, Old High German span, German Span "chip, splinter"), from PIE *spe- (2) "long, flat piece of wood" (cognates: Greek spathe "spade," also possibly Greek sphen "wedge").

As the word for a type of eating utensil, c. 1300 in English (in Old English such a thing might be a metesticca), in this sense supposed to be from Old Norse sponn, which meant "spoon" as well as "chip, tile." The "eating utensil" sense is specific to Middle English and Scandinavian, though Middle Low German spon also meant "wooden spatula." To be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth is from at least 1719 (Goldsmith, 1765, has: "one man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and another with a wooden ladle").

spoon (v.)

1715, "to dish out with a spoon," from spoon (n.). The meaning "court, flirt sentimentally" is first recorded 1831, a back-formation from spoony (adj.) "soft, silly, weak-minded, foolishly sentimental." Related: Spooned; spooning.