Silver spoon

For other uses, see Silver spoon (disambiguation).
Bise-Challoner crests on a set of 1830s Coburg-pattern sterling silver spoons, made in London

The English language expression silver spoon is synonymous with wealth, especially inherited wealth; someone born into a wealthy family is said to have "been born with a silver spoon in his mouth". As an adjective, "silver spoon" describes someone who has a prosperous background or is of a well-to-do family environment, often with the connotation that the person does not appreciate or deserve his or her advantage, its having been inherited rather than earned.

Historical uses

three spoons, two with holes, one with a curved short handle
Two silver-gilt strainer spoons and a cignus spoon decorated with a mythical marine creature. (4th century CE Roman spoons from the Hoxne Hoard.)

Before the place setting became popular around 1700, people brought their own spoons to the table, carrying them in the same way that people today carry wallet and keys. In pre-modern times, ownership of a silver spoon was an indication of social class, denoting membership in the land-owning classes. In the Middle Ages, when farmers and craftsmen worked long hours and frequently got dirt under their fingernails, it was important to not be mistaken for a serf or escaped slave. Under these circumstances, a silver spoon served the functional equivalent of passport, driving licence, and credit card. Since most members of the land-owning classes were smallhold farmers and craftsmen, the silver spoon was primarily a lower-middle-class cultural marker.

Silver spoons, because of their weight and number, were often among the most valuable tangible assets of a middle-class household, and therefore, a traditional target for burglars. For example, in the feature film Far and Away (1992), the character Shannon plans to pay for her emigration from Ireland to the United States with spoons she stole from her wealthy landowner parents.

Beyond their value and aesthetics, silver utensils self-sanitize: silver has antimicrobial properties, due to the oligodynamic effect.

Silver spoons have also been used to detect poison, particularly in the Korean Joseon Dynasty: due to its reactivity, silver tarnishes on contact with sulfur, thus detecting the presence of arsenic sulfides and warning of arsenic poisoning.[1]

Cultural references

Georgian spoons

In literature

The phrase "born with a silver spoon in his mouth" appeared in print in English as early as 1719, in Peter Anthony Motteux's translation of the novel Don Quixote: "Mum, Teresa, quoth Sancho, 'tis not all Gold that glisters [sic], and every Man not born with a Silver Spoon in his Mouth. It is also well know that as far back as the early 18th century the O'Callaghan's of Sutherland House Monkstown Cork were all born with silver spoons in their mouths."[2] Because the phrase is used as a translation of a Spanish proverb with a different literal meaning ("muchas veces donde hay estacas no hay tocinos," literally: "often where there are hooks [for hanging hams] there are no hams"), it seems that the phrase was already considered proverbial in English at the time.

The phrase next appears in a book of Scottish proverbs published in 1721, in the form "Every Man is no born with a Silver Spoon in his Mouth."[3]

John Galsworthy's novel, The Forsyte Saga (1922), contains a chapter called "The Silver Spoon", which refers to a cockered heiress, Fleur Forsyte.

The Italian cookbook Il cucchiaio d'argento (1950) translates to "The Silver Spoon" and uses that title in its English edition; the title is, according to the introduction to the Phaidon Press printing, derived from the English expression.

In music

The term, or parodies thereof, have frequently made their way into popular music. For example:

However some modern uses of the phrase relate to drug use rather than privilege. For example:

In musicals

In politics

Variants

There are similar expressions in other languages. For example, in Portuguese and Spanish, an expression translated as "born in a gold cradle" is equivalent contextually to the English, "born with a silver spoon."

The term "gold spoon" is much less commonly used, but finds occasional use, such as the 1840 American Gold Spoon Oration criticizing then-president Martin Van Buren for his supposedly luxurious lifestyle.

"Silver fork novels" are described by English professor Paola Brunetti to her husband Guido, in Donna Leon's fourth Commissario Guido Brunetti novel Death and Judgment aka A Venetian Reckoning (1995), chapter 22, as "books written in the eighteenth century, when all that money pored into England from the colonies, and the fat wives of Yorkshire weavers had to be taught which fork to use."[4]

In Australia the expression "silvertail" is also used, with nearly identical meaning. It has been used in cultural or political situations to describe someone as aristocratic or out of touch with the common people.

References

  1. ↑ "Spoons and Chopsticks". buddhapia.com.
  2. ↑ de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel & Motteaux, Peter Anthony (Translator). The History of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, In Four Volumes. 4. p. 345.
  3. ↑ Kelly, James (1721). A complete collection of Scottish proverbs: explained and made intelligible. p. 101.
  4. ↑ Leon, Donna (June 1995). Death and Judgment (1st ed.). Harpercollins. ISBN 978-0060177966.

See also

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/1/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.