Parts of a Fork – Tines, Slots, Points, Back and Handle

All 11 parts on the diagram

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Parts of the fork 5

Tines Each prong is a tine. Tines are narrow and often slightly curved; four became the usual number in the early 1800s.
Handle The part you pick up and hold the fork by. It ends in the head that carries the tines.
Point The tip of a tine, the part that goes into the food.
Slot The space between two tines. A fork with four tines has three.
Back The curve of the fork from handle to tines. In one style of eating, the knife pushes food onto it.

Kinds of fork 6

Dinner fork Its long, tapered tines are made to spear thick pieces of food.
Fish fork The wide left tine, often with a notch, gives leverage when cutting.
Salad fork Its left tine is extra wide, for cutting lettuce and broad vegetables.
Dessert fork It usually has three tines. The left one may be widened to cut with, though it is never sharpened.
Oyster fork A small fork with three short, wide tines. Used to part a mollusk's flesh from its shell.
Fondue fork A narrow fork for dipping food into a fondue pot. It usually has two tines, a long shaft and an insulating handle.

How this list was compiled: Every name checked on 2026-09-30, a name kept only where two independent sources use it. (1) The Visual Dictionary Online (QA International, published with Merriam-Webster), fork and examples of forks: tine, point, slot, back, handle; dinner, fish, salad, dessert, oyster and fondue forks, https://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/food-kitchen/kitchen/silverware/fork.php and https://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/food-kitchen/kitchen/silverware/examples-forks.php. (2) Wikipedia, text only: Fork and Tine (structural) (handle, head, tines or prongs; the four-tine design; dessert, salad and fondue forks), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tine_(structural). (3) Suzanne Von Drachenfels, The Art of the Table (Simon & Schuster, 2000), read as full-text search passages on the Internet Archive (long tapered tines of the dinner fork; the wide left tine and notch of salad, fish and dessert forks; the oyster fork's three short wide tines; forks in order of size), https://archive.org/details/artoftablecomple0000vond. For single words: 'points of the tines' in Anne Dinshah, Apples, Bean Dip, and Carrot Cake (2012), https://archive.org/details/applesbeandipcar0000dins; 'slots between the tines' in the Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, 18 May 1937, and in Anne Maxwell High, Aussie in America (2016), https://archive.org/details/aussieinamerical0000maxw; 'back of the fork' in Nancy Braganti, The Travelers' Guide to European Customs and Manners (1984), https://archive.org/details/travelersguideto0000brag. Hints and detail lines are in our own words. Licence: own work

The drawing: Drawn for this site on 2026-09-30 from plain geometry; no maker's pattern, nothing traced. Licence: own work

How it works

The pointy parts of a fork are its tines. This drawing names five parts of a dinner fork, then lines up six kinds of fork for a table-setting or hospitality class.

Read the full guide

From the points to the handle

The prongs are the tines, and the sharp tip of each one is its point. The gap between two tines is a slot, so four tines leave three slots. Seen from the side, the curve between the handle and the tines is the back. In the second drawing, tell the forks apart by size and by the tines: count them, then look for a wide left tine or a notch.

Tines and prongs are the same thing; tine is the word a parts list uses.
A fish fork and a salad fork both have a wide left tine. The fish fork is the larger one.

Questions and answers

What are the pointy parts of a fork called?

Tines. Prongs and teeth mean the same thing. The sharp end of each tine is its point, and the gap between two tines is a slot.

How many tines does a fork have?

The dinner fork drawn here has four; the four-tine design became usual in the early 1800s. A dessert fork usually has three, and a fondue fork usually has two.

What is the back of a fork?

The curved part from handle to tines, seen best from the side. In one style of eating, the knife pushes food onto the back of the fork.

What is the difference between a salad fork and a dinner fork?

A salad fork is shorter, and its left tine is extra wide for cutting lettuce and broad vegetables. A dinner fork is the large, all-purpose fork with four long, tapered tines.