Dictionary

saltspoon en · NOUN

Etymology

From salt + spoon.

Meanings

1. (historical) A small spoon used for serving or measuring salt, equivalent to ⅛ teaspoon.
   • Dashed the bold fork through pies of pork; O’er hard-boiled eggs the saltspoon shook; 1872, Charles Stuart Calverley, “The Palace”, in Fly Leaves, Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, page 15:
   • 1798, Charlotte Turner Smith, The Young Philosopher, London: T. Cadell, Jun. & W. Davies, Volume 1, Chapter 3, pp. 55-56, Her reasons […] for disliking paupers of every description were entirely on the surface; “she hated them,” she said, “for they were nasty dirty creatures; the fellows and wenches were all thieves; she once lost a salt spoon by one of them whom Master George thought proper to bring to her door for cold victuals […] ”
   • His gleaming little service of plate was so arranged upon his sideboard as that a slack salt-spoon would have instantly betrayed itself […] 1870 April–September, Charles Dickens, chapter 22, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1870, →OCLC:
   • There is no such thing as a saltspoon in Yucatan. You are expected to shake the salt out or take it out with your fingers. 1909, Channing Arnold, Frederick J. Tabor Frost, chapter 20, in The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan, London: Hutchinson, page 352:

Forms

Deriveds

saltspoonful

Translations (3)

de Salzlöffel (small spoon for salt) · fr cuillère à sel (small spoon for salt) · pl łyżeczka do soli (small spoon for salt)