A small spoon used for stirring tea or measuring small amounts in cooking, holding about 5 milliliters.
Compound: tea (from Chinese 'cha' via Dutch and Portuguese traders) + spoon (Old English 'spon'). The word appeared when tea drinking became fashionable in Europe around the 1600s.
The teaspoon size is so standardized worldwide that it's actually used as a measurement unit in medicine and cooking across cultures—one teaspoon is always about 5 milliliters, making it one of the few universal measuring tools!
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