saltspoon

English

A saltspoon (length: 9.5 cm /3¾ in.)

Etymology

From salt +‎ spoon.

Noun

saltspoon (plural saltspoons)

1. (historical) A small spoon used for serving or measuring salt, equivalent to ⅛ teaspoon.
   • 1798, Charlotte Turner Smith, The Young Philosopher, London: T. Cadell, Jun. & W. Davies, Volume 1, Chapter 3, pp. 55-56,^[1]

     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 […] ”

   • 1870 April–September, Charles Dickens, chapter 22, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1870, →OCLC:

     His gleaming little service of plate was so arranged upon his sideboard as that a slack salt-spoon would have instantly betrayed itself […]

   • 1872, Charles Stuart Calverley, “The Palace”, in Fly Leaves‎^[2], Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, page 15:

     Dashed the bold fork through pies of pork;
     O’er hard-boiled eggs the saltspoon shook;

   • 1909, Channing Arnold, Frederick J. Tabor Frost, chapter 20, in The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan‎^[3], London: Hutchinson, page 352:

     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.

Translations

small spoon for salt

• French: cuillère à sel f
• German: Salzlöffel m