How old is the fork?

Answer 1

The fork in history:

The knife and the spoon will have pre-dated the fork, long before recorded history.

There is no way of being certain how long mankind has been using the fork, or fork-like implements, for cooking and eating; they have certainly been in use for many, many centuries.

We know for sure that forks were used in ancient Greece, Rome, and adjacent areas, as well as in ancient Asia.

Only spoons and knives, with a pair of knives sometimes employed as we now use a knife and fork, are recorded as table cutlery in Western Europe until about the tenth century AD, when we begin to see evidence of the use of table forks.

In England the fork isn't recorded in use as table cutlery until the fifteenth century.

English word origin:

Our modern English word, fork, can be traced back to the Latin term furca, meaning pitchfork, forked stake, or fork used in cooking, though we don't know its origins beyond the Latin.

Furca came into Old English, via Old North (Norman) French fourque and, later, Germanic, as forca, describing a 'forked instrument used by torturers' and a 'pronged instrument for digging'.

The first recorded mention of a (table) fork in English is in a will dated 1463.

Answer 2

The fork dates back to ancient civilizations, with the first known use in ancient Egypt around 4th century BC. It became more common in Europe in the Middle Ages. Today, forks are a widely used utensil in many cultures around the world.