spoon [OE] In Old English a spoon was a chip of wood or a splinter, from the same Germanic root that gives us the span of *spick and span. The ‘eating utensil’ sense came in the Middle Ages, probably from the fact that spoons were most often carved out of wood or horn. The team that comes last in a competition can be said to win the wooden spoon. The original winner, back in the early 19th century, was the candidate coming last in the final examination in mathematics at Cambridge University. As a symbol of his ‘wooden-headedness’ or stupidity he would be presented with a wooden spoon.