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.
雙語例句
1. Smooth the mixture with the back of a soup spoon.
用湯勺的背麵把混合料抹平。
來自柯林斯例句
2. They were less willing to be spoon-fed doctrines from Japan.
他們不太願意被填鴨式地灌輸來自日本的學說。
來自柯林斯例句
3. Jarvis took the wooden spoon in the first tournament.
賈維斯在第一次錦標賽上墊底。
來自柯林斯例句
4. Remove the cover and spoon some of the sauce into a bowl.
打開蓋子，用勺子盛些調味汁到碗裏。
來自柯林斯例句
5. Work the oil gradually into the yolks with a wooden spoon.