It’s obvious to everyone in Western culture what forks and spoons are. There is also a combination implement that’s sort of a “serrated” spoon. It’s nowhere near as recent an invention as most people think, nor is it entirely settled that it should be called a “spork,” which is the most popular term for it. “Spork” has even been trademarked, at least in England.
The implement itself dates at least to the 1800s. In addition to being called a “spork” (a word that appeared only in the 20th century as far as anyone knows), it’s also been called a “foon.” “Foon” can still be found here and there, but the word has never been very popular — maybe it just sounds even sillier than “spork” so nobody wants to be caught using it. And besides, “foon” was already a word’ it was a form of the word “foe” that was in common English usage from about the 1300s to about the 1600s.
There’s yet another term for the “spork/foon” gadget, by the way: the “Runcible spoon.” The story goes that the thing was invented by Lord Runcible, who named it after himself. This is, unfortunately, no more than a story; there has never been a “Lord Runcible,” even though it really sounds like a title that ought to exist. the “runcible spoon” was a term coined by Edward Lear, who mentioned it in several of his nonsense poems in the late 1800s. For example, “The Owl and the Pussy Cat” includes the verse “They dined upon mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon.”
It’s not at all clear from his verses exactly what Lear meant by “runcible spoon” — nobody knows whether it was supposed to be a spork. However, Lear also referred to a “runcible raven,” a “runcible cat,” and even a “runcible wall,” and it’s difficult to imagine all those things being combined with a fork, a spoon, or both. Lear never told anyone where he came up with the word “runcible,” either. It’s similar to the obsolete word “rouncival,” which meant large, but whether Lear ever encountered “rouncival” and modernized it a bit, nobody knows.
There is, however, a possible clue in Lear’s Twenty-Six Nonsense Rhymes and Pictures, and it’s in the pictures. They’re drawings done by Lear himself. One of them shows the Dolomphious Duck “catching Spotted Frogs for her dinner with a Runcible Spoon.” The spoon in the picture is quite large, and has no serrations or tines as it would if it were a spork. As for why some people today call those things “runcible spoons,” well, nobody knows that either. The situation is almost as absurd as the world depicted in one of Lear’s verses — he was famous for limericks, which are almost by definition silly. He even wrote one that includes a spoon, although he didn’t manage to fit “runcible” into the rhyme scheme:
“There was an old person of Troy,
Whose drink was warm brandy and soy,
Which he took with a spoon,
By the light of the moon,
In sight of the city of Troy.”
By the way, it’s pretty easy to fit “runcible” into a limerick even though Lear didn’t:
There was an unusual boy
Who poured on his Cheerios, soy.
He ate them at noon
WIth his runcible spoon
In sight of the city of Troy.
See?
