tablespoon

/ˈteɪbəlˌspun/noun

tablespoon is a noun meaning “A large spoon, used for eating food from a bowl” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-A-B-L-E-S-P-O-O-N and has 3 syllables, and it appears 1.4 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of tablespoon is tablespoons.

What does tablespoon mean?

noun

1
CanadaUSA large spoon, used for eating food from a bowl.
2
AustraliaA spoon too large for eating, usually used for cooking or serving.
3
A unit of volume, the value of which varies regionally; in the US: three teaspoons or one half fluid ounce or roughly 15 ml; in Britain and Canada: exactly 15 ml; in Russia 18 ml; in Australia: four teaspoons or 20 ml.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce tablespoon?

UK /ˈteɪbəlˌspuːn/
UK [-bɫ̩-]
US /ˈteɪbəlˌspun/

Tablespoon has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-tablespoon.ogg, En-au-tablespoon.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of tablespoon

tablespoons plural
table spoon
table-spoon

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is tablespoon?

Tablespoon appears 1.4 times per million words in written English, the 23,835th most frequent word form in the list.

tablespoon0.0010.010.11101001,00010,000

rarerper million words of written Englishmore common

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with tablespoon

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

table-spoon vs tablespoon0 B

Also written: table-spoon (one word or two).

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

How do you abbreviate tablespoon?

Wiktionary records 3 abbreviations of tablespoon: tblspn, tbs, tbsp.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Tablespoon in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

Language	Words
French	cuillère à soupe, grande cuillère (a large spoon, used for eating food), louche, cuiller à pot (Australia: a spoon for cooking)
German	Esslöffel (a large spoon, used for eating food), Kochlöffel (Australia: a spoon for cooking)
Portuguese	colher, colher de sopa (a large spoon, used for eating food)
Spanish	cuchara de sopa, cuchara (a large spoon, used for eating food), cucharada (a unit of measure)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does tablespoon come from?

From table + spoon.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).