spoon

Middle English spoon, spoune, spone traces back to Old English spōn, meaning "sliver, chip of wood, shaving." That word descends through Proto-West Germanic *spānu from Proto-Germanic *spēnuz, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "chip, shaving, log, length of wood."

The word started as a simple term for a wood chip or shaving, and over time in English it narrowed to mean the eating utensil — likely because early spoons were carved from such wood chips. It eclipsed the older Middle English word for spoon, coclear, which had been borrowed from Latin cochlear. In 2003, writer Christine Miserandino coined a new metaphorical sense, using "spoons" to represent units of personal energy in her spoon theory.

It's cognate with German Span and Dutch spaan, both meaning "chip" or "shaving," as well as Swedish spån and Faroese spónur, the latter meaning both "wood chip" and "spoon" — showing the same shift happened there too.