Meaning of wooden spoon | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A spoon made from wood, commonly used in food preparation.
2. An ironic prize for finishing last in a competition.
   Australia, New-Zealand, idiomatic
3. The last junior optime who takes a university degree.
   dated
4. The lowest appointee of the junior year; sometimes, one especially popular in his class, without reference to scholarship. Formerly, it was a custom for classmates to present to this person a wooden spoon with formal ceremonies.
   US, dated

Equivalents

Examples

“Earnestly bent upon fulfilling the weighty, nay solemn, responsibilities of his office at all hazard, even at the risk⟳ of so far neglecting his parliamentary duties as to appear⟳ upon the division-list less frequently than any of his colleagues, Sir John Pakington wore the wooden spoon at the whitebait dinner, though with an air of waggery — almost as a decoration.”

“We submit⟳ that a wooden spoon of our day would not be justified in calling Galileo and Napier blockheads because they never heard of the differential calculus.”

CEFR level