eating with fork tines up or down

[fabzorba]

WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
This was quite an art to master, especially with small items hard to
pierce, like peas. When I was a child and could get away with it, I
would often turn the fork tines up so I could use it as a scoop, which
surely makes sense. I must admit that I do this sometimes when I am
eating alone, but never in company.

I rem seeing a British academic eating a meal with undergraduates many
years ago, and the way he handled those pesky peas was wonderful - he
would glue a few of them on his tines-down fork using some mashed
potato. Now, this etiquette seems to have largely gone. But I was
still surprised when I viewed an episode of Hannibal, the new American
series which has Mads Mikkelsen as the erudite gourmand psychiatrist
Hannibal Lecter, who happens to have being a serial killer as a side
line. In this episode, Hannibal once again prepares a sumptuous
European style feast. I noticed that his guests ate like typical
Americans, shoveling food into open mouths, and using eating utensils
as devices to point and make gestures with.

But then I saw Hannibal use the fork tines up! I was totally gob-
smacked! Surely this cannot be? Or am I getting something wrong?

[Ian Jackson]

In message
<a9a2c1c8-24e8-4bf1...@hc4g2000pbb.googlegroups.com>,
fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> writes

Being brung up proper, I was taught that unless it was a last resort,
when eating with a knife and fork, you should to keep the tines down.

However, some 50 years ago, I was at a semi-formal dinner where the
attendees were university engineering staff and their students. The guy
I was seated next to was one of the lecturers, and I was surprised when
he specifically asked the waiter if he could have an extra desert spoon.
I tactfully asked him why, and he replied that, as there were peas on
the menu, any engineer with any common sense would use a spoon to eat
them. I can't say I disagree with him.
--
Ian

[Leslie Danks]

I was also taught (under pain of a healthy clip round the ear) to keep the
tines facing downwards - unless the nature of the food requires that the
fork be transferred to the other hand and used without the knife. I'm not
sure what the TDN (pronunciation copyright protected) (Tines Down Nazis)
have to say about spaghetti.

--
Les (BrE)
"... be skeptical of government guidelines. The Indians learned not to trust
our government and neither should you." (Fallon & Enig)

[BDK]

In article <a9a2c1c8-24e8-4bf1-a423-87b163716bb3
@hc4g2000pbb.googlegroups.com>, myles....@gmail.com says...

I have to admit, I've never heard of, or wondered about the tines
pointing up or down meaning anything. Even my friend whose mother ran a
charm school didn't say anything about it, and she obsessed over all
kinds of nonsense. One time, I got fed up with her nitpicking about her
son's and my "manners", and I just tossed the fork and knife on the
table and picked up my sreak with my hands and ate my entire meal that
way, staring at her the whole time. It was a huge hit with her family,
especially her husband, but she didn't like it too much. She called my
mom up and told her what I did, and my mother's response, "And?", didn't
go over too well either.

--
BDK- Head FUD-Master Blaster. Friend to all kOOkbashers.

[Curlytop]

Ian Jackson set the following eddies spiralling through the space-time
continuum:

> However, some 50 years ago, I was at a semi-formal dinner where the
> attendees were university engineering staff and their students. The guy
> I was seated next to was one of the lecturers, and I was surprised when
> he specifically asked the waiter if he could have an extra desert spoon.
> I tactfully asked him why, and he replied that, as there were peas on
> the menu, any engineer with any common sense would use a spoon to eat
> them. I can't say I disagree with him.

I too were brung up proper, so I set the fork whichever way up is
appropriate - tines up or down as required. Using a spoon to scoop up the
peas is a definite no-no though.

There was one occasion where I had to reverse the usual layout - after I had
broken my left arm. For a while I could not raise my left hand far enough
to reach my mouth, so I had to have the fork in my right hand and the knife
in my left. Very difficult to get used to the reverse movements at first
but I managed it. (Finger movements were unaffected by the injury, and full
use of my left arm was gradually restored.)
--
ξ: ) Proud to be curly

Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Fork etiquette is a fascinating bit of comparative cultural history.
According to Petroski (_The Evolution of Useful Things_) the way that
Europeans and Americans treat forks has to do with what they did
before forks were introduced. In much of Europe, including the UK,
the practice was to eat with two knives, using one to hold the food
down while the other cut, and then using the first to bring the food
to the mouth. So when forks were introduced as a better second knife
(since the multiple tines meant that the food was less likely to twist
while cutting and the lack of a blade meant you were less likely to
cut your lips), it was held tines-down (to better stabilize) and it
remained in the non-cutting hand when bringing the food to the mouth
(as the second knife had).

In America, by contrast, the practice was to eat with a knife and
spoon, using the spoon to stabilize food (poorly) while cutting and
switching hands to scoop the cut food (or, apparently more commonly
there than in Europe, stew) and bring it to the mouth, because most
people have trouble either cutting or using a spoon with their off
hand. The fork was taken as a better spoon (since it could better
hold food when cutting, and you didn't need to push food onto it with
your knife), but the practice of changing hands and holding it convex
side up, as had been done with the spoon, remained.

Do Brits these days think of forks as more like spoons or more like
knives?

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |ActiveX is pretty harmless anyway.
SF Bay Area (1982-) |It can't affect you unless you
Chicago (1964-1982) |install Windows, and who would be
|foolish enough to do that?
evan.kir...@gmail.com | Peter Moylan

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Skitt]

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

In some (Asian, I think) cultures, eating is done using forks and
spoons. No knives are present. The spoon doubles as a crude cutting
instrument, when required.

--
Skitt (SF Bay Area)
http://home.comcast.net/~skitt99/main.html

[alien8er]

On May 26, 7:06 am, BDK <Cont...@Worldcontrol.com> wrote:
> In article <a9a2c1c8-24e8-4bf1-a423-87b163716bb3

> @hc4g2000pbb.googlegroups.com>, myles.abzo...@gmail.com says...

A female friend of my family was sent to a finishing school in
Interlaken, Switzerland (in the late 1960's) where she caught all
sorts of hell for being an American barbarian. She will recount at the
drop of a hat the Headmistress asking if she needed her roasted
chicken deboned so as not to have to eat it with her fingers, though
Female Friend successfully managed to use knife and fork on it all by
herself.

She did not mention the tines up/down distinction though and I don't
recall seeing her eat either way preferentially.

A little research shows that table forks were generally flat until
some 18th century German got the idea of curving them, before which
point they were called "split spoons". Farming forks (pitchforks etc.)
generally had curved tines since antiquity though so I'm wondering if
tines-up indicated one was a hayseed.

My family line has a high proportion of hayseeds, and I was taught
"fingers came before forks". Even my somewhat prissy Jehovah's Witness
aunt saw me, as a child, eating her (outstanding) fried chicken with
my fingers as a sign of great appreciation.

Anybody else remember sporks? Great idea efficiency-wise but they
never really caught on. Maybe it's because they're impossible to use
tines-down.


Dr. HotSalt

[alien8er]

On May 26, 4:29 am, Leslie Danks <leslie.da...@aon.at> wrote:
> Ian Jackson wrote:
> > In message

> > <a9a2c1c8-24e8-4bf1-a423-87b163716...@hc4g2000pbb.googlegroups.com>,
> > fabzorba <myles.abzo...@gmail.com> writes

Anyone else read Mad magazine back in the 1960's? I remember a
satire article describing the invention of a battery-operated fork
with spinning tines for use with spaghetti. Now you can buy the damn
things...


Dr. HotSalt

[R H Draney]

Ian Jackson filted:

>
>However, some 50 years ago, I was at a semi-formal dinner where the
>attendees were university engineering staff and their students. The guy
>I was seated next to was one of the lecturers, and I was surprised when
>he specifically asked the waiter if he could have an extra desert spoon.
>I tactfully asked him why, and he replied that, as there were peas on
>the menu, any engineer with any common sense would use a spoon to eat
>them. I can't say I disagree with him.

Barbarians!...anyone with half a brain would know to use chopsticks....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[R H Draney]

alien8er filted:

>
> Anyone else read Mad magazine back in the 1960's? I remember a
>satire article describing the invention of a battery-operated fork
>with spinning tines for use with spaghetti. Now you can buy the damn
>things...

Oh, that hasn't been a mere parody for quite some time now....

Circa 1980, a man named Howard Morris released a movie called "Gizmo!"
consisting of film clips of inventors from the 1920s through the early
1970s...when promoting the film, he was asked if he had noticed any ideas that
kept surfacing again and again while he scoured the archives...yes, he answered,
for some reason people keep trying to invent an automatic spaghetti fork....

The second most common idea was for an alarm clock that would force you out of
bed, whether by stripping away the bedclothes, tilting the bed to make you fall
out, or pouring water on your face....r

[Leslie Danks]

Or you could just get married.

[Dechucka]

"Skitt" <ski...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:kntnb7$fhv$1...@news.albasani.net...

Very true in a lot of SE Asia, first ran into it in Thailand, very good way
to eat. The Chinese felt that getting guest to butcher their meat at the
table was not proper so it is cut into edible size pieces in the kitchen
hence chopsticks can be used

[Mike L]

On Sun, 26 May 2013 11:51:41 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

>
>Fork etiquette is a fascinating bit of comparative cultural history.
>According to Petroski (_The Evolution of Useful Things_) the way that
>Europeans and Americans treat forks has to do with what they did
>before forks were introduced. In much of Europe, including the UK,
>the practice was to eat with two knives, using one to hold the food
>down while the other cut, and then using the first to bring the food
>to the mouth. So when forks were introduced as a better second knife
>(since the multiple tines meant that the food was less likely to twist
>while cutting and the lack of a blade meant you were less likely to
>cut your lips), it was held tines-down (to better stabilize) and it
>remained in the non-cutting hand when bringing the food to the mouth
>(as the second knife had).
>
>In America, by contrast, the practice was to eat with a knife and
>spoon, using the spoon to stabilize food (poorly) while cutting and
>switching hands to scoop the cut food (or, apparently more commonly
>there than in Europe, stew) and bring it to the mouth, because most
>people have trouble either cutting or using a spoon with their off
>hand. The fork was taken as a better spoon (since it could better
>hold food when cutting, and you didn't need to push food onto it with
>your knife), but the practice of changing hands and holding it convex
>side up, as had been done with the spoon, remained.
>
>Do Brits these days think of forks as more like spoons or more like
>knives?

Even these days I think most people still use knife and fork in the
traditional way; but few are now inhibited about using the fork like a
spoon when it works better. Curiously, more people seem to find it
acceptable to hold the knife like a pen, which is still on a par with
short socks with a suit with pens in the outside breast pocket.

--
Mike.

[Joe Fineman]

fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> writes:

> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.

That, AFAIK, is British style. Etiquette in America, as learned by me
in the 1940s, required cutting off a piece of meat with the fork in
the left hand & the knife in the right, and then transferring the fork
to the right hand to convey the meat to the mouth with the tines up.
What didn't require cutting was eaten with the right hand in the same
way. When I first saw a respectable woman on a British railway dining
car squashing peas onto the back of a fork, it was something to write
home about.

Much later, I injured my right elbow in such a way that it was awkward
to convey things to my mouth with my right hand, and I adopted the
British standard with gratitude.

> This was quite an art to master, especially with small items hard to
> pierce, like peas.

If peas are properly buttered, they will cling well enough to be
conveyed intact on the back of a fork -- provided that one takes care
to hold the fork at such an angle that the cargo is horizontal.
Squashing them is a pis aller, inasmuch as bursting them, like joy's
grape, against one's palate is a legitimate part of the pleasure of
eating them.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net

||: Most of our bridges now are over other roads. :||

[inf...@mindspring.com]

On Sun, 26 May 2013 19:33:54 +0100, Curlytop
<pvstownse...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

>I too were brung up proper, so I set the fork whichever way up is
>appropriate - tines up or down as required. Using a spoon to scoop up the
>peas is a definite no-no though.
>

Brings to mind a childhood limerick:

I eat my peas with honey.
I've done it all my life.
They do taste kind of funny
but it keeps them on my knife.

[Robert Bannister]

Neither. Or if they're like knives it's because they're for stabbing.

--
Robert Bannister

[cw...@gmx.net]

On Sun, 26 May 2013 00:50:28 -0700 (PDT), fabzorba
<myles....@gmail.com> wrote:

>WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
>together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
>This was quite an art to master, especially with small items hard to

>pierce, like peas. [---]

We French look upom the habit of eating peas with a tines-down fork as
a typically nonsensensical piece of British folklore.

[James Hogg]

You must be thinking of this:

There was an old fellow called Sonny
Who preferred to eat peas with some honey
As he'd done all his life
So they'd stay on the knife
Though it made the peas taste kind of funny.

--
James

[Katy Jennison]

On 26/05/2013 22:52, Mike L wrote:
> Curiously, more people seem to find it
> acceptable to hold the knife like a pen, which is still on a par with
> short socks with a suit with pens in the outside breast pocket.
>

I admit to doing that, unless I remember that I shouldn't, and am in
company where I care.

--
Katy Jennison

[Walter P. Zähl]

Leslie Danks <leslie...@aon.at> wrote:
> R H Draney wrote:
>
>> alien8er filted:
>>>
>>> Anyone else read Mad magazine back in the 1960's? I remember a
>>> satire article describing the invention of a battery-operated fork
>>> with spinning tines for use with spaghetti. Now you can buy the damn
>>> things...
>>
>> Oh, that hasn't been a mere parody for quite some time now....
>>
>> Circa 1980, a man named Howard Morris released a movie called "Gizmo!"
>> consisting of film clips of inventors from the 1920s through the early
>> 1970s...when promoting the film, he was asked if he had noticed any ideas
>> that kept surfacing again and again while he scoured the archives...yes,
>> he answered, for some reason people keep trying to invent an automatic
>> spaghetti fork....
>>
>> The second most common idea was for an alarm clock that would force you
>> out of bed, whether by stripping away the bedclothes, tilting the bed to
>> make you fall out, or pouring water on your face....r
>>
> Or you could just get married.

Well, *my* wife knows how to get up in the morning without waking me up.
;-)

/Walter

[Walter P. Zähl]

Joe Fineman <jo...@verizon.net> wrote:
> fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
>> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
>
> That, AFAIK, is British style. Etiquette in America, as learned by me
> in the 1940s, required cutting off a piece of meat with the fork in
> the left hand & the knife in the right, and then transferring the fork
> to the right hand to convey the meat to the mouth with the tines up.
> What didn't require cutting was eaten with the right hand in the same
> way.

This would be regarded as uncivilised in Germany, even though we also view
"tines down" as a sign of proverbial Britisch eccentricity.
We keep the fork in the left and the knife in the right hand most of the
time (held like a pen), and if not, they must never ever be put back on the
table, but placed on the plate.

All this is getting relaxed nowadays, though: I frequently observe people
eating e.g. starters (especially salad) just with a fork held in the right
hand.
Even in "good restaurants". O tempora ...

/Walter

[Swedish Cook]

To anyone in Europe, using the fork tines down will immediately identify
you as an American caveman.

No wonder you're having problems with peas and other stuff, besides
looking like five-year-olds who have just been given this strange
contraption and have no idea which way to grab it.

The Swedish cook

[Whiskers]

(The original article was cross-posted to too many groups to get through my
filters, hence my response here).

I think Brits these days think of table forks as table forks - not to be
confused with pastry forks or serving forks or salad forks or (even worse)
garden forks or pitch forks.

Ordinary medieval people would have owned only one knife (apart from
special tools of their trade); they would also probably have a spoon made
of wood or horn, and some sort of drinking vessel and food bowl. Food was
either spoonable (porridge, gruel, pottage, soup, stew, etc) or eaten from
the hand (pies, pasties, bread) or somewhere between (eg puddings).

The knife would be a prized possession, however humble, and would probably
be carried on the person in a sheath attached to the belt or hanging from
the neck, or in a scabbard held in a fold of clothing or in a pocket or
satchel. The "Sgian Dubh" (various spellings) often associated with modern
traditional Scottish or "Celtic" costume is probably descended from such
knives.

I'd never heard of anyone using two knives at once at the dining table,
even for carving a joint of meat; before forks, there were fingers. It
would seem unwise to put a sharp knife anywhere near ones own face while
eating in company! It is bad manners to use a table knife for transferring
food to ones mouth.

> Even these days I think most people still use knife and fork in the
> traditional way; but few are now inhibited about using the fork like a
> spoon when it works better. Curiously, more people seem to find it
> acceptable to hold the knife like a pen, which is still on a par with
> short socks with a suit with pens in the outside breast pocket.

I've assumed that someone holding a table knife like a writing implement is
probably coping with some sort of injury or deformity making a full-hand
grip difficult. I was raised to turn the fork 'up' when using it to carry
peas or other small or loose items to my mouth, but 'down' to transport
something impaled. The knife is used in the writing hand, the fork in the
other.

I've seen Americans using knife and fork like that to cut their food into
small pieces, then put down the knife and transfer the fork to the writing
hand for carrying chunks to the mouth; I hadn't noticed how they used the
'up' and 'down' options. That approach is used with pastries or cakes here
in England - on the rare occasions when a fork (even more rarely a proper
pastry fork) is provided with the cake or pastry.

A pastry fork may incorporate one edge that can serve as a small knife, in
which case a seperate knife need not be used. A similar design feature can
be seen in some "sporks" which try to combine the features of spoon and
fork, or spoon and knife and fork, into one implement for use with the
'main course'.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[Tony Cooper]

On Mon, 27 May 2013 17:36:21 +0200, Swedish Cook <sc...@swe.cook.swe>
wrote:

>fabzorba wrote:
>> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
>> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
>> This was quite an art to master, especially with small items hard to
>> pierce, like peas. When I was a child and could get away with it, I
>> would often turn the fork tines up so I could use it as a scoop, which
>> surely makes sense. I must admit that I do this sometimes when I am
>> eating alone, but never in company.
>>
>> I rem seeing a British academic eating a meal with undergraduates many
>> years ago, and the way he handled those pesky peas was wonderful - he
>> would glue a few of them on his tines-down fork using some mashed
>> potato. Now, this etiquette seems to have largely gone. But I was
>> still surprised when I viewed an episode of Hannibal, the new American
>> series which has Mads Mikkelsen as the erudite gourmand psychiatrist
>> Hannibal Lecter, who happens to have being a serial killer as a side
>> line. In this episode, Hannibal once again prepares a sumptuous
>> European style feast. I noticed that his guests ate like typical
>> Americans, shoveling food into open mouths, and using eating utensils
>> as devices to point and make gestures with.
>>
>> But then I saw Hannibal use the fork tines up! I was totally gob-
>> smacked! Surely this cannot be? Or am I getting something wrong?
>
>To anyone in Europe, using the fork tines down will immediately identify
>you as an American caveman.

An American caveman, eh? The only American cavemen I know about are
spelunkers. I wasn't aware that they take silverware into the
caverns.

>No wonder you're having problems with peas and other stuff, besides
>looking like five-year-olds who have just been given this strange
>contraption and have no idea which way to grab it.
>
>The Swedish cook

--
Tony Cooper - Orlando FL

[Irwell]

Where does 'eating with elbows on the table whilst carving
a chicken leg with the knife' fit in? Or did Henry VIII have a special
dispensation?

[Mike L]

On Mon, 27 May 2013 15:32:48 -0400, Tony Cooper
<tonyco...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 27 May 2013 17:36:21 +0200, Swedish Cook <sc...@swe.cook.swe>
>wrote:

[...]

>>
>>To anyone in Europe, using the fork tines down will immediately identify
>>you as an American caveman.
>
>An American caveman, eh? The only American cavemen I know about are
>spelunkers. I wasn't aware that they take silverware into the
>caverns.

Well, I'm really excited by this discovery that the Clovis lot had
metal tools. An awful lot of prehistory will have to be rewritten.

>
>>No wonder you're having problems with peas and other stuff, besides
>>looking like five-year-olds who have just been given this strange
>>contraption and have no idea which way to grab it.
>>
>>The Swedish cook

--

Mike.

[James Silverton]

I find that when I "eat American" I use the fork both up or down as
appropriate. Down certainly when I can lift the food by stabbing. I was
brought up in Britain and can easily use two handed eating and my kids
enjoyed learning the European method on visits. Transferring food to the
mouth with the back of the fork is not particularly difficult except
with things like peas.

I seem to remember that Dickens somewhere called eating American style a
horrible German custom.

--
Jim Silverton (Potomac, MD)

Extraneous "not." in Reply To.

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Never heard that version. I'm familiar with the other, which I see
back to 1948:

I eat my peas with honey,

I've done it all my life.

It makes the peas taste funny,
But it keeps them on my knife.

_Boys' Life_, July, 1948

(Or was that an original tossed off as a comment on "limerick"?)

I see "eating peas with a fork" used as a touchstone of etiquette
going back to 1832 and "eating peas with a knife" as a gaffe back to
1826.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |Your claim might have more
SF Bay Area (1982-) |credibility if you hadn't mispelled
Chicago (1964-1982) |"inteligent"

evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[James Hogg]

(Yes)

--
James

[James Hogg]

Now I've found a much earlier example than yours, attributed to William
Shakespeare:

I eat my pease with honey, ay, by God.
For such hath been my custom all my life.
The pease, I grant you, therewith taste most odd,
But it doth keep the whoresons on my knife.

--
James

[Whiskers]

It's almost impossible to carve a joint with even one elbow on the table,
let alone both. I never saw Henry VIII at table, but I would expect him to
have used both hands freely for anything that didn't need a spoon or cup.
A chicken leg would probably have been held by the thin end while chewing
the meat off it; such a small thing would need no 'carving'. A knife might
have been used to help dismember the carcass, of course, and to remove
manageable lumps from larger beasts.

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Since Americans tend to use it tines up and Brits (and, I had thought,
most Europeans) tend to use it tines down, this doesn't say much for
Europeans.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |If only some crazy scientist
SF Bay Area (1982-) |somewhere would develop a device
Chicago (1964-1982) |that would allow us to change the
|channel on our televisions......
evan.kir...@gmail.com | --"lazarus"

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Robert Bannister]

The main thing that was imparted to me about table manners in Germany
was to keep my hands above or on the table at all times.
--
Robert Bannister

[R H Draney]

Robert Bannister filted:

>
>The main thing that was imparted to me about table manners in Germany
>was to keep my hands above or on the table at all times.

Zat's because you schtill haff relatives in ze old country....r

[Walter P. Zähl]

R H Draney <dado...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> Robert Bannister filted:
>>
>> The main thing that was imparted to me about table manners in Germany
>> was to keep my hands above or on the table at all times.
>
> Zat's because you schtill haff relatives in ze old country....r
>

Ve know vat zese Americans do wiz zeir hands below ze table!

/Walter

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-05-26, fabzorba wrote:

> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.

> This was quite an art to master, especially with small items hard to
> pierce, like peas. When I was a child and could get away with it, I
> would often turn the fork tines up so I could use it as a scoop, which
> surely makes sense. I must admit that I do this sometimes when I am
> eating alone, but never in company.
>
> I rem seeing a British academic eating a meal with undergraduates many
> years ago, and the way he handled those pesky peas was wonderful - he
> would glue a few of them on his tines-down fork using some mashed
> potato. Now, this etiquette seems to have largely gone. But I was

Is it a breach of etiquette to serve peas without some adhesive food
at the same time?


--
I look back with the greatest pleasure to the kindness and hospitality
I met with in Yorkshire, where I spent some of the happiest years of
my life. --- Sabine Baring-Gould

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-05-26, BDK wrote:

> I have to admit, I've never heard of, or wondered about the tines
> pointing up or down meaning anything. Even my friend whose mother ran a
> charm school didn't say anything about it, and she obsessed over all
> kinds of nonsense. One time, I got fed up with her nitpicking about her
> son's and my "manners", and I just tossed the fork and knife on the
> table and picked up my sreak with my hands and ate my entire meal that
> way, staring at her the whole time. It was a huge hit with her family,

If it was good enough for mediaeval kings...


--
Nam Sibbyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla
pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: beable beable beable; respondebat
illa: doidy doidy doidy. [plorkwort]

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-05-28, Robert Bannister wrote:

> The main thing that was imparted to me about table manners in Germany
> was to keep my hands above or on the table at all times.

So others can tell you're not reaching for your dagger?


--
I used to be better at logic problems, before I just dumped
them all into TeX and let Knuth pick out the survivors.
-- plorkwort

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-05-26, alien8er wrote:

> A little research shows that table forks were generally flat until
> some 18th century German got the idea of curving them, before which
> point they were called "split spoons". Farming forks (pitchforks etc.)
> generally had curved tines since antiquity though so I'm wondering if
> tines-up indicated one was a hayseed.
...
> Anybody else remember sporks? Great idea efficiency-wise but they
> never really caught on. Maybe it's because they're impossible to use
> tines-down.


I have several sporks for travel & picnics. I wonder what we'd call
them if the "split spoons" name had persisted for forks ---
"semi-split spoons"?


--
The history of the world is the history of a privileged few.
--- Henry Miller

[CDB]

On 27/05/2013 9:42 PM, Robert Bannister wrote:
> Walter P. Zähl wrote:

[proper forking]

>> All this is getting relaxed nowadays, though: I frequently observe people
>> eating e.g. starters (especially salad) just with a fork held in the
>> right
>> hand.
>> Even in "good restaurants". O tempora ...

> The main thing that was imparted to me about table manners in Germany
> was to keep my hands above or on the table at all times.

Hauptsächlich during ze Floorshow. Ze Orgestra... zo beautiful...

[cw...@gmx.net]

By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
the US.

[Ian Jackson]

In message <7hl9q8taqpujrmcre...@4ax.com>, cw...@gmx.net
writes

>By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
>the US.

In UK too. Although some call them "tines", I've always called them
"prongs" (and still do).
--
Ian

[Mike L]

I'm sure Henry could have got away with anything, but IIRC he was
famous for the refinement of his table.

--
Mike.

[Mike L]

Hmm. I hadn't thought about this. I wonder if "tine" is more
"official" than "prong". Certainly I seem to say "prong" for food
forks and "tine" for garden and farm tools.

--
Mike.

[Jerry Friedman]

On May 28, 2:36 pm, Mike L <n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 28 May 2013 17:38:28 +0100, Ian Jackson
>

> <ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >In message <7hl9q8taqpujrmcreecmclfa7rh7c5k...@4ax.com>, cw...@gmx.net

> >writes
> >>By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
> >>the US.
>
> >In UK too. Although some call them "tines", I've always called them
> >"prongs" (and still do).
>
> Hmm. I hadn't thought about this. I wonder if "tine" is more
> "official" than "prong". Certainly I seem to say "prong" for food
> forks and "tine" for garden and farm tools.

Other way around for me (though I think I might use "tine" for garden
forks), and I'm surprised to see the statement that they're usually
called "prongs" in America.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Tony Cooper]

On Tue, 28 May 2013 18:07:58 +0200, cw...@gmx.net wrote:

>By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
>the US.

I supposed "usually" would require some statistical study and a pie
chart (the most appropriate graph for an eating utensil), but it's not
my sense that this is correct.

The pointy things on a table fork have usually been called tines in my
sight/hearing. Larger implements, like a pitchfork, may have prongs.

I don't think, however, that you would cause great confusion by
describing them with either word instead of the other.

[Skitt]

Tony Cooper wrote:
> cw...@gmx.net wrote:

>> By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
>> the US.
>
> I supposed "usually" would require some statistical study and a pie
> chart (the most appropriate graph for an eating utensil), but it's not
> my sense that this is correct.
>
> The pointy things on a table fork have usually been called tines in my
> sight/hearing. Larger implements, like a pitchfork, may have prongs.
>
> I don't think, however, that you would cause great confusion by
> describing them with either word instead of the other.
>

I agree with all of Tony's observations.

--
Skitt (SF Bay Area)
http://home.comcast.net/~skitt99/main.html

[Robin Bignall]

On Tue, 28 May 2013 21:30:11 +0100, Mike L <n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

[Henry VIII's refayned ways...]

>I'm sure Henry could have got away with anything, but IIRC he was
>famous for the refinement of his table.

You mean they stopped the dogs jumping onto it during state banquets?
--
Robin Bignall
Herts, England (BrE)

[Tony Cooper]

Well, thanks. That's a blanket approval with carry-over to all posts
on all subjects, I assume. That would give me a loyal following of
one.

[Oliver Cromm]

* Walter P. Zähl:

> Joe Fineman <jo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> writes:
>>

>>> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
>>> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
>>

>> That, AFAIK, is British style. Etiquette in America, as learned by me
>> in the 1940s, required cutting off a piece of meat with the fork in
>> the left hand & the knife in the right, and then transferring the fork
>> to the right hand to convey the meat to the mouth with the tines up.
>> What didn't require cutting was eaten with the right hand in the same
>> way.
>
> This would be regarded as uncivilised in Germany,

It looks childish to me, like you haven't mastered using both
hands yet. I had to endure a lot of remarks because I didn't get
good at this before the age of eight.

> even though we also view
> "tines down" as a sign of proverbial Britisch eccentricity.

Indeed. We always use it tines up, and I'm pretty sure German
table manners were imported from France, the center of culture at
the time, so ...

(This is a bit of a pet peeve for me since I discovered that most
of the differences between how [Western] household items work in
Germany and Japan actually go back to a British/continental split.
Even some things beyond household items.)

> We keep the fork in the left and the knife in the right hand most of the
> time (held like a pen),

I don't think that's a very good description, I see two major
differences between how I hold these implements. More like a
(writing) brush, I'd think. Or am I doing it all wrong?

> and if not, they must never ever be put back on the
> table, but placed on the plate.
>

> All this is getting relaxed nowadays, though: I frequently observe people
> eating e.g. starters (especially salad) just with a fork held in the right
> hand.
> Even in "good restaurants". O tempora ...

Infantilization of the whole society, I tell you.

--
'Ah yes, we got that keyboard from Small Gods when they threw out
their organ. Unfortunately for complex theological reasons they
would only give us the white keys, so we can only program in C'.
Colin Fine in sci.lang

[Skitt]

Tony Cooper wrote:

> Skitt wrote:
>> Tony Cooper wrote:
>>> cw...@gmx.net wrote:

>>>> By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
>>>> the US.
>>>
>>> I supposed "usually" would require some statistical study and a pie
>>> chart (the most appropriate graph for an eating utensil), but it's not
>>> my sense that this is correct.
>>>
>>> The pointy things on a table fork have usually been called tines in my
>>> sight/hearing. Larger implements, like a pitchfork, may have prongs.
>>>
>>> I don't think, however, that you would cause great confusion by
>>> describing them with either word instead of the other.
>>>
>> I agree with all of Tony's observations.
>
> Well, thanks. That's a blanket approval with carry-over to all posts
> on all subjects, I assume. That would give me a loyal following of
> one.
>

Well, no. That's not what I meant. I was referring only to the above
stuff. That, and maybe a few other things.

[Robert Bannister]

<applause>

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

I love that last sentence.

--
Robert Bannister

[fabzorba]

It's making my resident neuron ache, but I think that the construction
is basically solid, as strange as it sounds. It is, after all, another
version of "either one or the other" which is unexceptionable.

[John Holmes]

Robin Bignall wrote:
> On Tue, 28 May 2013 21:30:11 +0100, Mike L <n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> [Henry VIII's refayned ways...]
>
>> I'm sure Henry could have got away with anything, but IIRC he was
>> famous for the refinement of his table.
>
> You mean they stopped the dogs jumping onto it during state banquets?

This page gives some of the flavour of it:
http://www.silkroadgourmet.com/tag/tudor-cuisine/

And I can't resist another receipt; there have been too few posted here in
recent times:
http://www.godecookery.com/nboke/nboke76.html
Ryschewys Close and Fryez "might be described as deep-fried Fig Newtons".

--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au

[John Holmes]

I'd say they are tines when part of a like set, as on a fork of any sort.
Prongs can be more variable, or appear singly.

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-05-29, John Holmes wrote:

> Jerry Friedman wrote:

>> Other way around for me (though I think I might use "tine" for garden
>> forks), and I'm surprised to see the statement that they're usually
>> called "prongs" in America.
>
> I'd say they are tines when part of a like set, as on a fork of any sort.
> Prongs can be more variable, or appear singly.

A 1-prong fork is a skewer.


--
"It is the role of librarians to keep government running in difficult
times," replied Dramoren. "Librarians are the last line of defence
against chaos." (McMullen 2001)

[Leslie Danks]

Adam Funk wrote:

> On 2013-05-29, John Holmes wrote:
>
>> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>
>>> Other way around for me (though I think I might use "tine" for garden
>>> forks), and I'm surprised to see the statement that they're usually
>>> called "prongs" in America.
>>
>> I'd say they are tines when part of a like set, as on a fork of any sort.
>> Prongs can be more variable, or appear singly.
>
>
> A 1-prong fork is a skewer.
>

But where does it fork?

--
Les (BrE)
"... be skeptical of government guidelines. The Indians learned not to trust
our government and neither should you." (Fallon & Enig)

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-05-29, Leslie Danks wrote:

> Adam Funk wrote:
>
>> On 2013-05-29, John Holmes wrote:
>>
>>> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>>
>>>> Other way around for me (though I think I might use "tine" for garden
>>>> forks), and I'm surprised to see the statement that they're usually
>>>> called "prongs" in America.
>>>
>>> I'd say they are tines when part of a like set, as on a fork of any sort.
>>> Prongs can be more variable, or appear singly.
>>
>>
>> A 1-prong fork is a skewer.
>>
> But where does it fork?

in the road?


--
I don't quite understand this worship of objectivity in
journalism. Now, just flat-out lying is different from being
subjective. --- Hunter S Thompson

[Whiskers]

On 2013-05-29, Robin Bignall <docr...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 28 May 2013 21:30:11 +0100, Mike L <n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> [Henry VIII's refayned ways...]
>
>>I'm sure Henry could have got away with anything, but IIRC he was
>>famous for the refinement of his table.
>
> You mean they stopped the dogs jumping onto it during state banquets?

Well, maybe not the best dogs. Notions of "refinement" and "manners" have
varied a lot.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

[Mike L]

"Like a pen" is the usual description, but, as you've observed, it
isn't literal. "Like a brush" gives me a much better image.

>
>> and if not, they must never ever be put back on the
>> table, but placed on the plate.
>>
>> All this is getting relaxed nowadays, though: I frequently observe people
>> eating e.g. starters (especially salad) just with a fork held in the right
>> hand.
>> Even in "good restaurants". O tempora ...
>
>Infantilization of the whole society, I tell you.

I don't think it's ever been "improper" to eat small ready-cut things
with a fork - in the right hand, and with prongs curved upward. See
also, as somebody said yesterday, cake forks.

--
Mike.

[Tony Cooper]

On Wed, 29 May 2013 22:59:43 +0100, Mike L <n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>>> We keep the fork in the left and the knife in the right hand most of the
>>> time (held like a pen),
>>
>>I don't think that's a very good description, I see two major
>>differences between how I hold these implements. More like a
>>(writing) brush, I'd think. Or am I doing it all wrong?
>

I wonder if anyone has ever instructed another person on how to hold a
brush and said "Hold as you would a fork".

It's always the other way 'round.

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

cw...@gmx.net writes:

> By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
> the US.

FSVO "usually". They were always "tines" for me, both in the Chicago
area and here in the Bay Area. Pitchforks and the like have "prongs",
and so do policies and tests (e.g., the four prongs of the test for
deciding whether something is a fair use under copyright)

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |I value writers such as Fiske.
SF Bay Area (1982-) |They serve as valuable object
Chicago (1964-1982) |lessons by showing that the most
|punctilious compliance with the
evan.kir...@gmail.com |rules of usage has so little to do
|with either writing or thinking
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ |well.
| --Richard Hershberger

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Oliver Cromm <lispa...@crommatograph.info> writes:

> * Walter P. Zähl:
>
>> Joe Fineman <jo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
>>>> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
>>>
>>> That, AFAIK, is British style. Etiquette in America, as learned
>>> by me in the 1940s, required cutting off a piece of meat with the
>>> fork in the left hand & the knife in the right, and then
>>> transferring the fork to the right hand to convey the meat to the
>>> mouth with the tines up. What didn't require cutting was eaten
>>> with the right hand in the same way.
>>
>> This would be regarded as uncivilised in Germany,
>
> It looks childish to me, like you haven't mastered using both hands
> yet.

Whereas, interestingly, this is exactly the knock on the European
style of eating in the US. Little kids (well, those old enough to
trust with a knife) who haven't yet learned how to pass the fork back
and forth without thinking about it leave the fork in their right
hand.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |To find the end of Middle English,
SF Bay Area (1982-) |you discover the exact date and
Chicago (1964-1982) |time the Great Vowel Shift took
|place (the morning of May 5, 1450,
evan.kir...@gmail.com |at some time between neenuh fiftehn
|and nahyn twenty-fahyv).
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Kevin Wald

[Tony Cooper]

On Wed, 29 May 2013 16:37:41 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Oliver Cromm <lispa...@crommatograph.info> writes:
>

>> * Walter P. Z�hl:

>>
>>> Joe Fineman <jo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
>>>>> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
>>>>
>>>> That, AFAIK, is British style. Etiquette in America, as learned
>>>> by me in the 1940s, required cutting off a piece of meat with the
>>>> fork in the left hand & the knife in the right, and then
>>>> transferring the fork to the right hand to convey the meat to the
>>>> mouth with the tines up. What didn't require cutting was eaten
>>>> with the right hand in the same way.
>>>
>>> This would be regarded as uncivilised in Germany,
>>
>> It looks childish to me, like you haven't mastered using both hands
>> yet.
>
>Whereas, interestingly, this is exactly the knock on the European
>style of eating in the US. Little kids (well, those old enough to
>trust with a knife) who haven't yet learned how to pass the fork back
>and forth without thinking about it leave the fork in their right
>hand.

As a left-hander, I have the fork in my left hand and the knife in my
right, so I don't pass the fork to the other hand.

Using good manners, I put the knife down after cutting. I don't
always do that, though. What I don't do is hold the knife
perpendicular to the table when it is not being used.

[R H Draney]

Mike L filted:

>
>On Tue, 28 May 2013 19:24:23 -0400, Oliver Cromm
><lispa...@crommatograph.info> wrote:
>

>>* Walter P. Z�hl:

>>
>>> We keep the fork in the left and the knife in the right hand most of the
>>> time (held like a pen),
>>
>>I don't think that's a very good description, I see two major
>>differences between how I hold these implements. More like a
>>(writing) brush, I'd think. Or am I doing it all wrong?
>
>"Like a pen" is the usual description, but, as you've observed, it
>isn't literal. "Like a brush" gives me a much better image.

I wonder how you'd describe the grip my father was forced to use after wrist
surgery, when the range of motion of pretty much *all* the joints was severely
limited....

"Like a motorcycle handlebar", maybe....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[R H Draney]

Evan Kirshenbaum filted:

>
>cw...@gmx.net writes:
>
>> By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
>> the US.
>
>FSVO "usually". They were always "tines" for me, both in the Chicago
>area and here in the Bay Area. Pitchforks and the like have "prongs",
>and so do policies and tests (e.g., the four prongs of the test for
>deciding whether something is a fair use under copyright)

I was with you until the last part...forks in things like rivers and roads have
"branches", and that's the term I'd extend to the metaphorical ones in courses
of study....

I think that's what I'd use for the multiple ends of a tuning fork, too...or
maybe "limbs"....r

[fabzorba]

On 27 May, 05:21, Skitt <skit...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

> > fabzorba writes:
> >> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
> >> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.

> >> This was quite an art to master, especially with small items hard to
> >> pierce, like peas. When I was a child and could get away with it, I
> >> would often turn the fork tines up so I could use it as a scoop, which
> >> surely makes sense. I must admit that I do this sometimes when I am
> >> eating alone, but never in company.
>
> >> I rem seeing a British academic eating a meal with undergraduates many
> >> years ago, and the way he handled those pesky peas was wonderful - he
> >> would glue a few of them on his tines-down fork using some mashed
> >> potato. Now, this etiquette seems to have largely gone. But I was
> >> still surprised when I viewed an episode of Hannibal, the new American
> >> series which has Mads Mikkelsen as the erudite gourmand psychiatrist
> >> Hannibal Lecter, who happens to have being a serial killer as a side
> >> line. In this episode, Hannibal once again prepares a sumptuous
> >> European style feast. I noticed that his guests ate like typical
> >> Americans, shoveling food into open mouths, and using eating utensils
> >> as devices to point and make gestures with.
>
> >> But then I saw Hannibal use the fork tines up! I was totally gob-
> >> smacked! Surely this cannot be? Or am I getting something wrong?
>
> > Fork etiquette is a fascinating bit of comparative cultural history.
> > According to Petroski (_The Evolution of Useful Things_) the way that
> > Europeans and Americans treat forks has to do with what they did
> > before forks were introduced.  In much of Europe, including the UK,
> > the practice was to eat with two knives, using one to hold the food
> > down while the other cut, and then using the first to bring the food
> > to the mouth.  So when forks were introduced as a better second knife
> > (since the multiple tines meant that the food was less likely to twist
> > while cutting and the lack of a blade meant you were less likely to
> > cut your lips), it was held tines-down (to better stabilize) and it
> > remained in the non-cutting hand when bringing the food to the mouth
> > (as the second knife had).
>
> > In America, by contrast, the practice was to eat with a knife and
> > spoon, using the spoon to stabilize food (poorly) while cutting and
> > switching hands to scoop the cut food (or, apparently more commonly
> > there than in Europe, stew) and bring it to the mouth, because most
> > people have trouble either cutting or using a spoon with their off
> > hand.  The fork was taken as a better spoon (since it could better
> > hold food when cutting, and you didn't need to push food onto it with
> > your knife), but the practice of changing hands and holding it convex
> > side up, as had been done with the spoon, remained.
>
> > Do Brits these days think of forks as more like spoons or more like
> > knives?
>
> In some (Asian, I think) cultures, eating is done using forks and
> spoons.  No knives are present.  The spoon doubles as a crude cutting
> instrument, when required.
>
I thought they used chopsticks, which might seem even less sensible
than tine-down use of the fork. A chopstick is the handle of a fork
with tines removed, and a spoon with no ladle at the end. But it does
work. People even eat rice with it. Try doing that with a tine-down
fork!

[fabzorba]

On 29 May, 23:19, Leslie Danks <leslie.da...@aon.at> wrote:
> Adam Funk wrote:
> > On 2013-05-29, John Holmes wrote:
>
> >> Jerry Friedman wrote:
>
> >>> Other way around for me (though I think I might use "tine" for garden
> >>> forks), and I'm surprised to see the statement that they're usually
> >>> called "prongs" in America.
>
> >> I'd say they are tines when part of a like set, as on a fork of any sort.
> >> Prongs can be more variable, or appear singly.
>
> > A 1-prong fork is a skewer.
>
> But where does it fork?
>

No one forking knows...

[fabzorba]

On 30 May, 07:59, Mike L <n...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I don't think it's ever been "improper" to eat small ready-cut things
> with a fork - in the right hand, and with prongs curved upward. See

Well, perhaps where you were brought up...

[fabzorba]

On 30 May, 08:36, Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kirshenb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> cw...@gmx.net writes:
> > By the way, what you all call tines is more usually called prongs in
> > the US.
>
> FSVO "usually".  They were always "tines" for me, both in the Chicago
> area and here in the Bay Area.  Pitchforks and the like have "prongs",
> and so do policies and tests (e.g., the four prongs of the test for
> deciding whether something is a fair use under copyright)
>

Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tine_(structural) has
tines on a pitchfork (so it's gotta be true...)

I am beginning to think that "tines" and "prongs" are examples of what
I call "exact synonyms" which are surprisingly rare in English. These
are synonmyms where either variant can be used in any context where
such terms could be reasonably used, and there is nothing to recommend
the use of one variant over the other in any such contexts. Perhaps
"merry-go-round" and "carousel" is another example. In such cases, one
option may be said to be just a little more la-di-da than the other.
"Carousel" is la-di-dadier than "merry-go-round", and "tines" is la-di-
dadier than "prongs".

[Trevor]

"fabzorba" <myles....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:693bf298-1fc9-4d16...@mq5g2000pbb.googlegroups.com...

>I thought they used chopsticks, which might seem even less sensible
than tine-down use of the fork. A chopstick is the handle of a fork
with tines removed, and a spoon with no ladle at the end. But it does
work. People even eat rice with it. Try doing that with a tine-down
fork!

Far easier than using chopsticks IMO! Both can be made to work with
experience of course, but the whole idea of having to learn how to eat with
unsuitable implements seems patently silly to me, even though I was brought
up with the 'always eat with tines down', different knives, forks, spoons
depending on the dish etc. All silly nonsense I'm glad is less rigidly
adhered to than it once was. Some people still prefer to eat a hot dog,
hamburger or fried chicken with knife and fork though, but at least they now
find it hard to convince everyone else to follow suit.

Trevor.

[Peter Brooks]

I don't think that they're exact synonyms. As has been said already,
some, like me, think of garden forks having prongs and table forks
having tines.

[Peter Brooks]

On May 30, 11:03 am, "Trevor" <tre...@home.net> wrote:
> "fabzorba" <myles.abzo...@gmail.com> wrote in message

One of the things that I enjoyed about the two months that I spent in
South Korea was learning how to be adept with their metal chopsticks -
they're more difficult than wooden or plastic ones by quite a bit. In
the end I was able to eat rice with ease using them and even do pretty
well with noodle soup.

I brought a pair home with me so that I could continue to exercise my
new-found skill and I use them quite often.

Of course, apart from the politeness involved in using them at the
time, there's not much point to having this achievement, this doesn't
prevent it being a pleasing thing to have achieved and a skill I enjoy
exercising just for fun.

[Trevor]

"Peter Brooks" <peter.h....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:899eed3a-7028-495f...@w5g2000vbd.googlegroups.com...

One of the things that I enjoyed about the two months that I spent in
South Korea was learning how to be adept with their metal chopsticks -
they're more difficult than wooden or plastic ones by quite a bit. In
the end I was able to eat rice with ease using them and even do pretty
well with noodle soup.
I brought a pair home with me so that I could continue to exercise my
new-found skill and I use them quite often.
Of course, apart from the politeness involved in using them at the
time, there's not much point to having this achievement, this doesn't
prevent it being a pleasing thing to have achieved and a skill I enjoy
exercising just for fun.

-----------------------------------

Yes mastering a difficult skill can sometimes be satisfying, despite being
totally pointless. Other times its just a pain in the proverbial.

Trevor.

[Adam Funk]

AFAICT, chopstick-using cultures also prepare food so as to be
suitable for chopsticks (bite-sized pieces; rice varieties that work
well in clumps).


--
Disagreeing with Donald Rumsfeld about bombing anybody who gets in our
way is not a crime in this country. It is a wise and honorable idea
that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin risked their lives for.
--- Hunter S Thompson

[Ian Jackson]

In message <rjkj7ax...@news.ducksburg.com>, Adam Funk
<a24...@ducksburg.com> writes

>On 2013-05-30, fabzorba wrote:
>
>> On 27 May, 05:21, Skitt <skit...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>> In some (Asian, I think) cultures, eating is done using forks and
>>> spoons.  No knives are present.  The spoon doubles as a crude cutting
>>> instrument, when required.
>>>
>> I thought they used chopsticks, which might seem even less sensible
>> than tine-down use of the fork. A chopstick is the handle of a fork
>> with tines removed, and a spoon with no ladle at the end. But it does
>> work. People even eat rice with it. Try doing that with a tine-down
>> fork!
>
>
>AFAICT, chopstick-using cultures also prepare food so as to be
>suitable for chopsticks (bite-sized pieces; rice varieties that work
>well in clumps).
>

And if the food cannot be picked up by the chopsticks, the bowl is
raised to the lips, and the food is shovelled into the mouth.
--
Ian

[CDB]

On 30/05/2013 5:03 AM, Trevor wrote:

> "fabzorba" <myles....@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I thought they used chopsticks, which might seem even less
>> sensible
> than tine-down use of the fork. A chopstick is the handle of a fork
> with tines removed, and a spoon with no ladle at the end. But it
> does work. People even eat rice with it. Try doing that with a
> tine-down fork!

> Far easier than using chopsticks IMO! Both can be made to work with
> experience of course, but the whole idea of having to learn how to
> eat with unsuitable implements seems patently silly to me, even
> though I was brought up with the 'always eat with tines down',
> different knives, forks, spoons depending on the dish etc. All silly
> nonsense I'm glad is less rigidly adhered to than it once was. Some
> people still prefer to eat a hot dog, hamburger or fried chicken with
> knife and fork though, but at least they now find it hard to convince
> everyone else to follow suit.

Once when I was making myself useful at a conference, I looked across
the hotel terrace where I was having breakfast and saw one of the
delegates eating his buttered toast with knife and fork. From Tuvalu, I
think.

[CDB]

On 29/05/2013 11:17 AM, Adam Funk wrote:
> Leslie Danks wrote:
>> Adam Funk wrote:
>>> John Holmes wrote:
>>>> Jerry Friedman wrote:

>>>>> Other way around for me (though I think I might use "tine" for garden
>>>>> forks), and I'm surprised to see the statement that they're usually
>>>>> called "prongs" in America.

>>>> I'd say they are tines when part of a like set, as on a fork of any sort.

Agreed (Eastern Ontario).

>>>> Prongs can be more variable, or appear singly.

Or if there are only two, for me. A carving fork has prongs; a
table-fork has tines.

>>> A 1-prong fork is a skewer.

>> But where does it fork?

> in the road?

Why n-not?

[Adam Funk]

Very practical indeed.


--
In the 1970s, people began receiving utility bills for
-£999,999,996.32 and it became harder to sustain the
myth of the infallible electronic brain. (Verity Stob)

[Jerry Friedman]

On May 27, 4:39 am, Walter P. Zähl <spamsin...@zaehl.de> wrote:
...

> This would be regarded as uncivilised in Germany, even though we also view

> "tines down" as a sign of proverbial Britisch eccentricity.

> We keep the fork in the left and the knife in the right hand most of the

> time (held like a pen), and if not, they must never ever be put back on the

> table, but placed on the plate.
>
> All this is getting relaxed nowadays, though: I frequently observe people
> eating e.g. starters (especially salad) just with a fork held in the right
> hand.

...

Heck, just having salad as a first course is proof of the Twilight of
the West. I'm told.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Peter Brooks]

On May 30, 2:10 pm, Ian Jackson
<ianREMOVETHISjack...@g3ohx.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <rjkj7axr4b....@news.ducksburg.com>, Adam Funk

'Chop-sticked', 'chopped' or 'conveyed', rather than 'shovelled', I'd
have thought - shovelling would involve a spoon of shovel-like design
or proportions.

[Leslie Danks]

Or eating salad at all.

I read somewhere that the literal translation of one Native American word
for "starvation" is "having to eat plants".

--
Les (BrE)
"... be skeptical of government guidelines. The Indians learned not to trust
our government and neither should you." (Fallon & Enig)

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Can you find evidence of anybody using "tines" in a way similar to,
e.g.,

Although interpretation is fluid, there is a 4-prong test that has
been developed to help ascertain Fair Use.

http://olms.cte.jhu.edu/3673

or

The first two prongs of the Miller test are held to the standards
of the community, and the last prong is held to what is reasonable
to a person of the United States as a whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

That sense seems to always be "prongs".

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a
SF Bay Area (1982-) |barbarian and thinks that the
Chicago (1964-1982) |customs of his tribe and island are
|the laws of nature.
evan.kir...@gmail.com |
| George Bernard Shaw
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

"Trevor" <tre...@home.net> writes:

> "fabzorba" <myles....@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:693bf298-1fc9-4d16...@mq5g2000pbb.googlegroups.com...
>>I thought they used chopsticks, which might seem even less sensible
>>than tine-down use of the fork. A chopstick is the handle of a fork
>>with tines removed, and a spoon with no ladle at the end. But it
>>does work. People even eat rice with it. Try doing that with a
>>tine-down fork!

If you see chopsticks in a Thai restaurant, it will be because they
think that locals expect all Asians to use them. They are a spoon
culture.

> Far easier than using chopsticks IMO! Both can be made to work with
> experience of course,

I'm reminded at this juncture of an co-worker from southern India, who
grew up using her hand (with food designed to be eaten that way), who
talked about how difficult and unnatural she found it, as a teenager,
to learn to use a fork and knife.

I never even tried using chopsticks until I was in my late teens, and
I didn't get comfortable enough with them to eat a meal until I was in
my 20s. Now I can't imagine them not feeling perfectly normal. My
14-year-old son first started using "training chopsticks" in
restaurants when he was about four or five, and by the time he was ten
or so stopped asking for a fork.

We watched _Mythbusters_ last night, and they were testing whether
males and females throw differently[1]. At one point they mentioned
that (unlike the professional pitcher they brought in) none of their
subjects had actually received any training in how to throw. My
reaction was "They may not have actually had formal pitching lessons,
but all of the boys--and fewer of the girls--almost certainly *were*
actually taught to throw". I taught enough boys and girls how to
throw to know that it really is an explicit teaching process
(modelling, molding, critiquing, making adjustments), but it happens
early enough that most people can't remember it happening. The same
thing happens with skills like using a fork or chopsticks if it's done
early enough. It just becomes the most natural thing in the world, to
the extent that you find it hard to believe that it ever wasn't.

> but the whole idea of having to learn how to eat with unsuitable
> implements seems patently silly to me, even though I was brought up
> with the 'always eat with tines down', different knives, forks,
> spoons depending on the dish etc. All silly nonsense I'm glad is
> less rigidly adhered to than it once was. Some people still prefer
> to eat a hot dog, hamburger or fried chicken with knife and fork
> though, but at least they now find it hard to convince everyone else
> to follow suit.

[1] They found the expected differences until they asked people to
throw with their off hands, at which point the differences
disappeared. When I started coaching, they made us run through
all the drills with our off hands so that we could remind
ourselves of what it felt like before somebody showed us how to do
things we'd been doing without thinking about them for decades.
Because that's what it was going to feel like to the little kids
we were going to have to teach how to throw, catch, and hit.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |Well, if you can't believe what you
SF Bay Area (1982-) |read in a comic book, what can you
Chicago (1964-1982) |believe?!
| Bullwinkle J. Moose
evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Adam Funk]

On 2013-05-30, Leslie Danks wrote:

> Jerry Friedman wrote:

>> Heck, just having salad as a first course is proof of the Twilight of
>> the West. I'm told.
>
> Or eating salad at all.
>
> I read somewhere that the literal translation of one Native American word
> for "starvation" is "having to eat plants".

How many different words do they have for "meat"?


--
Carrots continue to suffer from the jibes of people who like to
dispense what H. W. Fowler called "worn-out humor."
--- Joy of Cooking 1975

[Oliver Cromm]

* Evan Kirshenbaum:

> Oliver Cromm <lispa...@crommatograph.info> writes:
>
>> * Walter P. Z�hl:

>>
>>> Joe Fineman <jo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>> fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
>>>>> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
>>>>
>>>> That, AFAIK, is British style. Etiquette in America, as learned
>>>> by me in the 1940s, required cutting off a piece of meat with the
>>>> fork in the left hand & the knife in the right, and then
>>>> transferring the fork to the right hand to convey the meat to the
>>>> mouth with the tines up. What didn't require cutting was eaten
>>>> with the right hand in the same way.
>>>
>>> This would be regarded as uncivilised in Germany,
>>
>> It looks childish to me, like you haven't mastered using both hands
>> yet.
>
> Whereas, interestingly, this is exactly the knock on the European
> style of eating in the US. Little kids (well, those old enough to
> trust with a knife) who haven't yet learned how to pass the fork back
> and forth without thinking about it leave the fork in their right
> hand.

It's not only that you hold your fork in the left hand, you're
supposed to use the knife to move most food onto the fork. How do
you eat, say, rice anyway?

--
'Ah yes, we got that keyboard from Small Gods when they threw out
their organ. Unfortunately for complex theological reasons they
would only give us the white keys, so we can only program in C'.
Colin Fine in sci.lang

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Oliver Cromm <lispa...@crommatograph.info> writes:

> * Evan Kirshenbaum:
>
>> Oliver Cromm <lispa...@crommatograph.info> writes:
>>

>>> * Walter P. Zähl:

>>>
>>>> Joe Fineman <jo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>>> fabzorba <myles....@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> WIWAL, I was taught to eat my dinner with a knife and fork used
>>>>>> together, and with the fork having tines pointing down all the time.
>>>>>
>>>>> That, AFAIK, is British style. Etiquette in America, as learned
>>>>> by me in the 1940s, required cutting off a piece of meat with the
>>>>> fork in the left hand & the knife in the right, and then
>>>>> transferring the fork to the right hand to convey the meat to the
>>>>> mouth with the tines up. What didn't require cutting was eaten
>>>>> with the right hand in the same way.
>>>>
>>>> This would be regarded as uncivilised in Germany,
>>>
>>> It looks childish to me, like you haven't mastered using both hands
>>> yet.
>>
>> Whereas, interestingly, this is exactly the knock on the European
>> style of eating in the US. Little kids (well, those old enough to
>> trust with a knife) who haven't yet learned how to pass the fork back
>> and forth without thinking about it leave the fork in their right
>> hand.
>
> It's not only that you hold your fork in the left hand, you're
> supposed to use the knife to move most food onto the fork.

Mostly not, in the tines-up US world. Mostly, you simply either spear
the food on the tines or slide it underneath and scoop it up. It's
only when you don't have enough mass left on the plate in the food
itself (after scraping it together into a pile) or in another food to
push against that you have to resort to using your knife to act as a
wall to push against. And when that happens, you hold your knife in
you left hand.

> How do you eat, say, rice anyway?

As described above. Typically, you scoop. At the end, you push
against your knife.

Unless you're using chopsticks, of course.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |As the judge remarked the day that
SF Bay Area (1982-) | he acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
Chicago (1964-1982) |To be smut
|It must be ut-
evan.kir...@gmail.com |Terly without redeeming social
| importance.
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ | Tom Lehrer

[Robert Bannister]

On 31/05/13 12:35 AM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

> I never even tried using chopsticks until I was in my late teens, and
> I didn't get comfortable enough with them to eat a meal until I was in
> my 20s. Now I can't imagine them not feeling perfectly normal. My
> 14-year-old son first started using "training chopsticks" in
> restaurants when he was about four or five, and by the time he was ten
> or so stopped asking for a fork.

At one stage, about 30 years ago, I used to eat out a lot and I still
liked Chinese food, so I forced myself to become expert with chopsticks.
These days, I rarely eat out, or if I do it is Indian or Thai food which
always comes with knife, fork and spoon. I'm afraid that if I tried to
take up chopsticks now, I would find the appropriate muscles had atrophied.
--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 30/05/13 6:00 PM, Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2013-05-30, fabzorba wrote:
>
>> On 27 May, 05:21, Skitt <skit...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>> In some (Asian, I think) cultures, eating is done using forks and
>>> spoons. No knives are present. The spoon doubles as a crude cutting
>>> instrument, when required.
>>>
>> I thought they used chopsticks, which might seem even less sensible
>> than tine-down use of the fork. A chopstick is the handle of a fork
>> with tines removed, and a spoon with no ladle at the end. But it does
>> work. People even eat rice with it. Try doing that with a tine-down
>> fork!
>
>
> AFAICT, chopstick-using cultures also prepare food so as to be
> suitable for chopsticks (bite-sized pieces; rice varieties that work
> well in clumps).

Have you watched Chinese people eat? They will pick up whole crabs in
their chopsticks and bite bits off. It's fork-only cultures that can be
guaranteed to serve you bite-sized food.
--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

Which would be a lot more sensible.

--
Robert Bannister

[Tony Cooper]

On Thu, 30 May 2013 09:35:34 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:

>We watched _Mythbusters_ last night, and they were testing whether
>males and females throw differently[1]. At one point they mentioned
>that (unlike the professional pitcher they brought in) none of their
>subjects had actually received any training in how to throw. My
>reaction was "They may not have actually had formal pitching lessons,
>but all of the boys--and fewer of the girls--almost certainly *were*
>actually taught to throw". I taught enough boys and girls how to
>throw to know that it really is an explicit teaching process
>(modelling, molding, critiquing, making adjustments), but it happens
>early enough that most people can't remember it happening.

What I observed watching my two grandsons in their first year of
organized (Babe Ruth) baseball was that the youngsters who had not
been given throwing lessons prior to playing is that the natural
motion is almost side-arm...what is often described as "throwing like
a girl".
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando FL

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Lewis <g.k...@gmail.com.dontsendmecopies> writes:

> In message <61y04e...@gmail.com>

> Evan Kirshenbaum <evan.kir...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> [1] They found the expected differences until they asked people to
>> throw with their off hands, at which point the differences
>> disappeared.
>

> Not exactly. Interestingly, the males were more accurate than the
> females in the off-hand test, despite having been less accurate on
> the on-hand test.

There's no way any of their numerical differences were at all
significant. They were averaging speeds from a 24-year-old and a
7-year-old for God's sake! And they only had a single subject for
each sex for each age group. I was looking at form.

>> When I started coaching, they made us run through
>> all the drills with our off hands so that we could remind
>> ourselves of what it felt like before somebody showed us how to do
>> things we'd been doing without thinking about them for decades.
>> Because that's what it was going to feel like to the little kids
>> we were going to have to teach how to throw, catch, and hit.
>

> I liked the fact they described a good throw as being like a dance move,
> because that is exactly what it is. A good throw uses the entire body.

As someone who specialized in fielding (including throwing and
catching), I can say that there was one person they showed whose
throwing didn't make me wince. (Yes, it was the pro. And yes, that
includes the softball player.) All the rest had me wanting to say,
"Here's what you need to do, and it will work so much better". Not
that I don't see a lot of junior high and high school players that
make me react the same way.

One of my favorite mementos is a card from the four (5- and
6-year-old) girls on the first team I coached that read "Thanks, Coach
Evan, for teaching us how to not throw like girls".

Point with your glove at the target. Show the midget. Feed the
giant. Step with your glove foot. Throw. It's amazing how many
people either never got shown correctly or forgot. And how many good
young athletes coast by on strength and reflexes doing things sub-
optimally and still being better than their peers...until they reach a
level where they can't anymore and they have to break their bad
habits.

But I don't kid myself that throwing well is anything but a very
unnatural motion. And one which, at the extremes that pitchers take
it to, is past the body's tolerances. There's a reason the "throws
like a girl" motion is the way it is and why it's the first one kids
try. It's natural and fits the way the body is designed. You don't
have to stretch for it, and you can do it all day without getting
sore.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |It's like grasping the difference
SF Bay Area (1982-) |between what one usually considers
Chicago (1964-1982) |a 'difficult' problem, and what
|*is* a difficult problem. The day
evan.kir...@gmail.com |one understands *why* counting all
|the molecules in the Universe isn't
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ |difficult...there's the leap.
| Tina Marie Holmboe

[Robert Bannister]

I have discovered that I throw like a girl these days, but that means
not from the side, but throwing from the elbow instead of the shoulder.
Fortunately, real girls have progressed from the time when I was a kid
although some of the Asian girls need lessons in both throwing and running.

--
Robert Bannister

[R H Draney]

Lewis filted:
>
>I use chopsticks a lot, not just for "asian" foods, but for a large
>variety of foods, including things like bratwurst, hotdogs, meatballs,
>and when I feel like showing off, Jello (if it's been cut up into
>cubes). I prefer them, for 'nugget' sized foods, to a fork.

Buttered popcorn...best way in the world to keep from getting your fingers
greasy....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[Adam Funk]

Interesting. I spent a week in South Korea a few years ago &
everything I was served was either spoon-oriented, bite-sized, or
already on a stick.


--
There's a statute of limitations with the law, but not with
your wife. [Ray Magliozzi, Car Talk 2011-36]