Today, two English speaking Canadians (one from Montreal, one from Toronto) astonished me by never having heard the word “tine”. I won’t say it is the commonest word in my ideolect, but both my wife (from NYC) and I (from Philly) are certainly familiar with it. So I am curious now. Is it used, say, in Idaho? Across the pond. And it you don’t use it, what do you call the tines of a fork? Prongs, maybe?
I know that it’s called a tine. But only as a trivia answer. Doesn’t come up in conversation.
Quite common, IME.
Mrs. FtG watches a lot of cooking shows and I know many of them use the term, e.g., Alton Brown. Nothing regional or specialized about it.
I’ve known it from a quite young age. You learn about forks, you learn about tines.
My tines be long
My tines be short
My tines end ere their first report
(A riddle.)
I think “prong” is probably more common, such as a “multi-pronged approach” and an electrical plug is described as having prongs. But I’m definitely familiar with it, since childhood. I was also that kid who liked reading a lot.
If a couple of minutes ago you held up a fork to me and asked me what the little pointy things are called, I may or may not have stumbled trying to come up with it, but when I saw the word “tine” I automatically interpreted it to be the pointy bits on a fork. So the word is in my vocabulary, but not my active one.
I’ll add, “tine” dates back to the 12th century per Merriam-Webster while “prong” goes back to the 15th so “tine” is centuries older, if that helps.
In Texas - common enough that pretty much everyone knows what it means, would be my guess. Way more common that “aglet.”
Tine is either the pointy bits of a fort, or the pointy bits of a pitchfork. It’s just not a real conversation hog… sort of like… bezel or chamfer, or cotter pin or nit or zygote.
I’ve used and heard it in conversation, and for forks, it’s a “tine.” I’m not sure I would call them “prongs” for whatever reason–it’s just a fixed phrase in my head, I guess. “Prongs” I think of as bigger, somehow. I realize the definitions are basically synonymous in this context, but that’s how my mind thinks of them.
Across the pond, one should know what a tine is, and that a fish fork has three of them, otherwise one would be identified as an irredeemable oik who would probably drink from the finger bowl and use ghastly words such as “toilet” and “serviette”.
Slightly more seriously, “tine” is probably fairly well understood by the middle classes and upwards, and by crossword fans.
In the glens, when night falls and the mist rolls in, we speak of little else.
Oh, so that is what the youngsters call them now.
I am from the Deep South and live in New England. I know what tines are and almost always have to the best of my memory. I think most Americans do. What else are you going to call them should the rare need arise? Those pointy sticks of metal? Canadian and American English aren’t that different. The OP probably just ran across some Canadians with a less than stellar English vocabulary.
This Canadian agrees. Tine is, or should be, common enough in any English dialect.
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Some farm equipment have tines so I’d say it’s a fairly common term
In the silver set we had when I was growing up, the salad forks had three tines and dinner forks had four and one must understand this. Otherwise, one would do a poor job of setting the table and mother would not be pleased.
Seems like parents hardly teach manners these days, let alone the finer points of table settings.
Now get off my lawn, you kids!
We have a restaurant called Knife and/& Time here in Chicago. I haven’t been to it, though.
As a Canadian born in Toronto and raised in Montreal I certainly know what a tine is, but I suspect I could find several dunces who wouldn’t know the word.
They never heard that Jimi Croce song: If I could put tine in a bottle…
In my experience, tines are usually parallel and not widespread, at all.
Does the river Tyne have a fork in it?