Parts of a Spoon – Bowl, Tip, Neck, Back and Handle

All 11 parts on the diagram

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Parts of the spoon 5

Bowl The shallow, hollow end of the spoon, oval or round. Some texts call it the head.
Handle The part you pick up and hold the spoon by. A slender handle is often called a stem.
Tip The rounded end of the bowl. When a spoon is forged, the metal is left thicker here.
Neck The place where the spoon widens from the handle into the bowl.
Back The outer, curved side of the bowl. It rests on the table.

Kinds of spoon 6

Tablespoon A large spoon, used for serving and sometimes for soup.
Soup spoon A spoon for soup, its bowl large or round. Round-bowled soup spoons were a Victorian invention.
Dessert spoon About the size of a soup spoon. But its bowl is oval, not round.
Teaspoon A small spoon, suited to stirring and sipping coffee or tea.
Coffee spoon A small spoon for after-dinner coffee cups, usually smaller than a teaspoon.
Iced tea spoon Its long handle reaches the bottom of a tall glass. Used to stir a drink or eat a sundae.

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), spoon and examples of spoons: bowl, tip, back, neck, handle; tablespoon, soup spoon, dessert spoon, teaspoon, coffee spoon, sundae spoon, https://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/food-kitchen/kitchen/silverware/spoon.php and https://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/food-kitchen/kitchen/silverware/examples-spoons.php. (2) Wikipedia, text only: Spoon (bowl or head, handle, stem; the tip of the bowl and the neck in the forging of a spoon), List of types of spoons, Soup spoon, Dessert spoon and Iced tea spoon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_types_of_spoons. (3) For the back of the bowl: W. Edmund Hood, Tiffany Silver Flatware 1845-1905 (Antique Collectors' Club, 1999), read as full-text search passages on the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/tiffanysilverfla0000hood. (4) For the iced tea spoon's name and the spoons in order of size: Suzanne Von Drachenfels, The Art of the Table (Simon & Schuster, 2000), read the same way, https://archive.org/details/artoftablecomple0000vond. 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

A spoon is a shallow bowl at the end of a handle. This drawing names five parts of a tablespoon, then lines up six kinds of spoon for a table-setting or hospitality class.

Read the full guide

From the tip to the handle

The hollow end is the bowl, and its rounded far end is the tip. The neck is where the spoon widens from the handle into the bowl. Seen from the side, the outer curve of the bowl is the back. In the second drawing, tell the spoons apart by size first, then by the bowl: round for soup, oval for dessert, and teaspoon-size on a long handle for iced tea.

Bowl and back are two sides of one part: the bowl is the hollow you fill, the back is its outside.
A soup spoon and a dessert spoon are about the same length. The soup spoon has the rounder bowl.

Questions and answers

What are the parts of a spoon called?

The bowl, which holds the food, and the handle. The rounded far end of the bowl is the tip, its outer curve is the back, and the neck is where the handle widens into the bowl.

What is the scoop part of a spoon called?

The bowl. It is shallow and oval or round, and some texts call it the head of the spoon.

What is the handle of a spoon called?

Simply the handle. When it is a slender stick it is often called the stem, and on antique spoons the stem may end in a small ornamental knob called a knop.

What is the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon?

Size. A tablespoon is a large spoon used for serving; a teaspoon is a small one for stirring tea or coffee. As kitchen measures, one tablespoon holds three teaspoons.