is a small spoon that can be used to stir a cup of tea or coffee, or as a tool for measuring volume.

[3] A teaspoon is a small spoon suitable for stirring and sipping the contents of a cup of tea or coffee, or adding a portion of loose sugar to it.

These special spoons were introduced almost simultaneously with tea and coffee[6] (Pettigrew points to use in the mid-17th century[7]).

Originally teaspoons were exotic items, precious and small, resembling the demitasse spoons of the later times.

[11] A special dish for resting the teaspoons, a "spoon boat", was a part of the tea set in the 18th century.

[13][14] Pettigrew reports that sometimes the spoons were numbered to make it easier to match the cups with the guests after a refill.

[15] A small scale study in Greece found that household teaspoons are a poor approximation of the standard tsp measure.

This can be exacerbated here by failing to use a real teaspoon: a teaspoon's greater area supports considerably more to be heaped above it than a deeper hemispherical measuring spoon, so if using a measuring spoon, one will typically use less than called for by the recipe.

[30][31] When tea-drinking was first introduced to England circa 1660, tea was rare and expensive, as a consequence of which teacups and teaspoons were smaller than today.

[33] Nevertheless, the teaspoon, usually under its Latin name, continued to be used in apothecaries' measures for several more decades, with the original definition of one fluid dram.