From about 1700 the place setting became popular, and with it the "table-spoon" (hyphenated), "table-fork" and "table-knife".

Around the same time the tea-spoon and dessert-spoon first appeared, and the table-spoon was reserved for eating soup.

[4] The 18th century witnessed a proliferation of different sorts of spoons, including the mustard-spoon, salt-spoon, coffee-spoon, and soup-spoon.

In the late 19th century UK, the dessert-spoon and soup-spoon began to displace the table-spoon as the primary implement for eating from a bowl, at which point the name "table-spoon" took on a secondary meaning as a much larger serving spoon.

is usually used to refer to a tablespoon, to differentiate it from the smaller teaspoon (tsp.).

in lower case, to emphasize that the larger tablespoon, rather than the smaller teaspoon, is wanted.

The Australian official definition of the tablespoon as a unit of volume is:[7] This definition was promulgated by the Metric Conversion Board in the 1970s, as part of the country’s metrication process.

In the 18th century, the table-spoon became an unofficial unit of the apothecaries' system of measures, equal to 4 drams (⁠1/2⁠ fl oz, 14.8  mL).