Grammar Girl here. It's the time of year for family gatherings, roasted turkey, and setting a beautiful table with all your finest tableware.

So today we're going to look at all the fascinating and sometimes scandalous histories behind the very implements you'll be using to serve

and enjoy your Thanksgiving feast if you're in the United States. Forks, spoons, knives,

ladles, saucers, and chargers. I started out looking at the etymology of these words,

but the history was too fun not to share. First, picture this. It's Venice in the year

2004, and a Byzantine princess, who was probably named Maria Aripolliana, arrives for her wedding to

Giovanni or Siolo, son of the doge of Venice, carrying a case of golden two-pronged forks.

And at the wedding feast, she ate with one, which absolutely scandalized the Venetian guests,

because in those days, everyone ate with their hands.

Local clergy condemned her for this shocking display

of decadence, with some accounts saying a priest declared that, quote, God in his wisdom has provided

man with natural forks, his fingers. Therefore, it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metal forks for them

when eating." Just two years later, the plague came to Venice and killed the princess,

and St. Peter Damien eventually proclaimed it was divine punishment for her lavish lifestyle, such as using a fork.

According to Edom Online, the word fork came into Old English from a Latin word,

describing a two-pronged fork for cooking or a pitchfork. And this connection to pitchforks

would haunt the fork for centuries, because its pronged design

made many people think of the devil's infernal tool. But forks had actually been around for a long time

before the Byzantine princess shocked Venice, just not in Europe. The earliest known forks

were discovered in China, made from bone during the Bronze Age.

Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans all had large forks, but they used them as cooking utensils

for lifting meat from boiling pots, not for eating. The innovation of the Byzantine Empire was likely the personal use of forks at the

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