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I received a beautiful set of flatware for Hanukkah from my sweet husband. I was a little surprised, however, to see the insert call it "cutlery." I always thought "cutlery" was knives. However, when I look it up, it is described as both "cutting instruments and tools" and then "utensils such as knives, forks, and spoons used in tableware. Is that how you use the word "cutlery?" | ||
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Cutlery for me is knives, forks, spoons and the like (I hadn't even registered the possible connexion with 'cut'), but I've never heard the term 'flatware'. | |||
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We put all such items in our cutlery-drawer (along with other vital tools such as corkscrews and bottle-openers Richard English | |||
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Yep, cutlery means knives, forks, spoons, etc. to me, too. "Flatware" is strictly a North American term. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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Interesting. I wonder if this definition of "cutlery" is more a UK one. Americans? I call the knives, forks and spoons that we eat with daily "flatware" or sometimes "silverware," though if it isn't silver that isn't accurate. | |||
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Yup - silverware is silver. Flatware is all other such stuff that isn't silver. I bet is a wedding registry kind of language. ******* "Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions. ~Dalai Lama | |||
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Here's what Wordweb has to say: Noun: flatware Useage: N. Amer. 1. Tableware that is relatively flat and fashioned as a single piece 2. Silverware eating utensils The term means nothing in the UK. Richard English | |||
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Kalleh, Why don't you ask CJ Strolin? He is the knife expert.  | |||
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Thanks, KHC. I will ask him. | |||
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From the OED Online:
When I was a kid, table knives, forks, and spoons were called silverware (in my family) or eating utensils. They were silver in color only. I had no idea then that there were such things made of real silver. I don’t remember hearing the words cutlery, flatware, or tableware until I was older. But I would reserve cutlery for sharp utensils that actually cut. It seems to me that was the original meaning according to the OED definition above, though it goes beyond the dinner table to include sickles, shears, and scissors. I’d never heard of hollow-ware until I saw it in the OED. Tinman | |||
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The OED is missing the required nuance then: while it shows that AmE preserves the original sense of edged implements only, it doesn't show that in BrE it now covers forks and spoons. 'Cutlery' and 'cut' are unrelated, by the way. (Unless 'cut' comes ultimately from a Norse borrowing from Old French. I'm not sure whether chronology and geography intersected enough for that to happen.) | |||
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Interesting, Aput, that cutlery and cut are unrelated. The online OED says that the verb form of cut probably has Scandanavian roots: "The word is not recorded in OE. (nor in any WGer. dialect), and there is no corresponding verb in Romanic. Mod. Norwegian kutte = skjære to cut (chiefly used by sailors) is certainly adopted from English; but a verb kåta, (kutå) = skära, hugga to cut, is widely diffused in Swedish dialects, and app. an old word, from an OTeut. stem *kut-, *kot-, which is probably the source also of the Eng. vb., whatever the intermediate history of the latter." On the other hand, cutlery comes from the Old French word coutelerie, meaning "cutting utensils," from the Old French word coutel, meaning knife. Etymology.com says that "cut" either has evolved from the Scandanavian roots or from the Old French word coutel, though the OED obviously is more reliable. Still, if cutlery comes from a word that means knives, I wonder how the dinnerware definition evolved. Tinman, when I was a little, my family also called our knives, forks and spoons "silverware," even though our flatware was only silver in color, too. I forgot about term dinnerware. That's used a lot, too. Here is what our esteemed knife seller (CJ) says, KHC, about cutlery versus flatware: "For me, "cutlery" = knives, particularly those used in preparing food, and "flatware" = spoons & forks etc., though dictionaries blur the distinction." | |||
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Basically, 'cut' comes from some Scandinavian word, though the recorded exemplars are not enough to tell which. It's all rather murky. 'Cutlery' is more straightforward: the Latin root is cul- giving culter 'part of a plough blade', with diminutive of that cultellus 'knife'. This becomes modern French couteau 'knife'. The various Scandinavian forms don't enable us to tell which was the original, but one possibility is something like *kutel 'knife', which is very close to an intermediate stage (somewhere around the year 800 plus or minus I don't know how much) of the transition between cultellus and couteau. I don't actually think it's likely, because although the Normans were in France round then, forms of the word are recorded in Norwegian, Swedish... you'd need Norman borrowings from Normandy to be transmitted back into Scandinavia. So I don't think that's likely, and the resemblance between 'cut' and 'cutler' is more likely to be just a coincidence. And it doesn't work for other forms of Latin. That had cult-, and the loss of the [l] was particular to Old French, so cut- couldn't come from Latin generally, only from the French variety of it. | |||
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Skeat's etymological dictionary cites a few more Scandinavian cognates: Mid. Swed. kotta 'cut', Swed. dial. kuta, kåta, köta, käta 'cut small with a knife', kuta, kytti 'knife'; and the interesting ones, Norw. kyttel, kytel, kjutul 'knife for barking trees'. Now first, it's not entirely clear what the original vowel was, though [u] looks most likely; and second, the suffix on the Norwegian words is probably just the common Germanic instrument suffix -el/-le as in thimble, handle, bundle. If so, it's unrelated to the Latin diminutive -ell-. However, this does give the possible *kutel which just possibly came from a French word of the same form and meaning. The Latin word went cultellum > coltello > coltel > couteau, where the spelling with <u> actually represented a diphthong with the vowel [u] in Middle French. In Mod. Fr. the spelling has remained but the vowels have changed further. The [l] > [u] change is common (modern southern English, Polish, Portuguese), and no interchange of consonants was required. The existence of coutel shows that the first [l] changed first. | |||
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Very interesting, aput, to the extent I can follow it. My brain is spinning. Thank you. You mention -le as a Germanic instrument-suffix (thimble; handle; bundle). Is it related to -le as a diminutive suffix (chuckle, giggle)? Is either version of -le connected with the suffix -lette, which we saw in the french predecessor of 'cutlet', and seem to me to be a diminutive? | ||
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The French suffix -lette is a double diminutive. (Like German -chen and -lein.) Cutlet became, by loan translation, Schnitzel in German (from the verb schneiden 'to cut'). Diminutive suffixes also connote cuteness or preciousness. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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Dinner gathering on New Year's Day. The Greeks cut the Vasilopita ("Basil Cake") on the first, looking for the embedded coin. Family discussion turns to the proper assortment of utensils for a formal dinner. Then I see the fellowship at Wordcrafters is already deep into a similar topic. Thus I share a small note on cutlery from the first conversation, regarding the fish knife. Seems the fish knife was a later invention, so owning fish knives meant one bought, rather than inherited, the family silverware. Occasion for a bit of snobbery. RJA | |||
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Hi I was just wondering if anyone has any ideas as to why my family refer to cutlery i.e. knife and forks etc as the tools. We live in New Zealand and are of irish decent. | |||
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Hello, Kit! In the USA one sometimes hears, "kitchen utensils," and since "utensil" and "tool" are related words it seems not much of a leap from utensil to tool. It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. -J. Krishnamurti | |||
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I never noticed that this was an unusual usage until my daughter pointed it out to me. She says 'normal' people use tools to refer to garden or workshop tools. I find it interesting when people use different words or pronunciation and wonder were it originates from. e.g. My nieces say 'dressing gownd" for dressing gown. Also English immigrants or even children of English immigrants with a totally New Zealand accent will often still say uz instead of us like the english do. | |||
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Welcome, Kit. It's great to have someone else here from New Zealand. Our Stella is from there, too, though she has been a bit ill recently. As Geoff says, we might say "utensils," but not tools, at least in the U.S. How about in England? | |||
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I can't say I have seen or heard 'tools' being used in this way, but wouldn't be surprised if I did. I've also heard cutlery referred to jocularly as 'eating irons' in the past, by the way. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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