The spork already provides two handy features in one: that of a spoon and of a fork. But the knife is absent. What about making one side of the handle of a spork a knife edge. Most sporks are plastic numbers, and no white, plastic knife blade is going to cut someone's hand as they use it to eat. But if they came upon a piece of food that needed a stronger cutting point, they could just turn the utensil around, grip a point lower on the handle, and use the dull blade to cut. This would curb those frustrating moments when you press too hard with the spork prongs to cut something, and they break off.

If having a dull knife blade on a handle is alarming to some, the blade could even be included somewhere else. Maybe the "spoon" portion could be elongated a bit and the edge turned into a corrugated blade of some sort.
-- smizzou, Jun 29 2001

The Knork http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Knork
A slightly earlier stage in the movement towards total utensil convergence. [Monkfish, Jun 29 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Runcible spoon, definition 1 http://www.bartleby...61/65/R0346500.html
The American Heritage Dictionary claims that a runcible spoon already has a cutting edge, as well as a bowl and tines. [hello_c, Jun 29 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Runcible spoon, Learish history http://www.straight...ssics/a961108a.html
The Am. Her. Dict. may be perpetuating a late, irrational rationalizing of the original 'quiz' word, though. [hello_c, Jun 29 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Runcible spoon, 1898 definition http://www.bartleby.com/81/14638.html
For instance, Brewer's Phrase and Fable gave it a *hinge*, two bowls, no edges or points. [hello_c, Jun 29 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]

Another mushroom word http://www.bartleby.com/81/13965.html
Why I put quiz in quotes above. [hello_c, Jun 29 2001, last modified Oct 17 2004]

The three-use implement - known to my childhood as a runcible spoon; see links - doesn't cut your mouth. The sharp edge stops short of the prongs, which alone enter the lips. When drinking from it, soup or custard, one uses the spoon properly; with the long axis parallel to the table-edge, and the edge away from you, you tilt it away to fill it with soup & then drink from the nearer side of the spoon's bowl, not from the front.

(I don't know why it's such a rule that you tilt the spoon away to fill it with soup. Maybe the oceanic rhythm, the systole & diastole of the soup flowing into the spoon, quivering as you lift it, and continuing its journey over the prunes-and-prisms lips of the diner, is reason enough. Maybe the delicate rhythm of strong fingers barely rolling the handle of the spoon is more than enough reason. Maybe I'll go lie down now.)
-- hello_c, Jun 29 2001


Did they learn nothing from jutta? "Foon" is superior to "Spork"...on so many levels!
-- The Military, Jun 30 2001


Although in many ways, "Improved Spork" is just such a great HalfBakery idea title.
-- hippo, Jul 02 2001


If you're really *that* worried about how the spork (foon, knork, whatever) looks and what you should call it, why not forget the whole thing, blend all your food and drink it through a straw? Problem solved.
-- ichinichi, Jul 02 2001


The 1950's dictionary I used as a Kid, defined runcible spoon as a "Three pronged pickle fork" which fits fairly closely with the American Heritage Dictionary's version.

Peter, I'm pretty certain it was a nonsense word when Lear coined it, but as the Owl and the Pussycat was a popular poem in the nineteenth century, the term probably became attributed to any strange and unusual spoon-like device.
-- Lemon, Jul 02 2001


[ichinichi] You realize, of course, you've just set cogs awhirl at the thought of tricking-out the drinking straw.
-- The Military, Jul 03 2001


"Spork straw" could be its own idea but everyone is so close here. one prong is a straw leading up the handle. So knork, spork, straw lets make them all a single happy utencile.
-- krod, Feb 23 2004



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