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Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

A Way with Words, a radio show and podcast about language and linguistics.

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Runcible spoon -- is it just a spork or something more?
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1
2014/06/30 - 10:27am
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 Trying to explain "runcible spoon" (as in the nursery rhyme "The Owl and the Pussycat") to a non-native speaker, I came up with "spork without a cutting edge"... Is this correct?  He said that he had seen sporks with a cutting edge and wondered if the two terms referred to the same item.  I am stumped.

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2014/06/30 - 1:38pm
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Runcible is a word created by Edward Lear, the author of "The Owl and the Pussycat."  He created this and other words simply for the way they sounded and never gave definitions.  In more recent times dictionaries have defined it as synonomous with spork.

Ron Draney
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2014/06/30 - 4:50pm
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Growing up, I always assumed a runcible spoon was one of those things they had for feeding infants with the handle curled back into a kind of ring, so the parent doing the feeding wouldn't risk letting go of the utensil.

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