spatula
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of spatula
1515–25; < Latin: a flat piece, batten, equivalent to spath ( a ) spathe + -ula -ule
Explanation
Don’t even think about making pancakes if you don’t have a spatula. What else would you flip them with? There are two main types of spatulas, both of which are kitchen utensils. One has a wide, flat surface attached to the end of a handle and is ideal for picking up, flipping, or serving hot foods like pancakes and hamburgers. The other has a more flexible end, usually made of rubber or plastic, and is used for mixing batter or spreading icing. Painters also use a type of spatula to mix or spread paint.
Vocabulary lists containing spatula
Words to Know Before You Defrost the Bird
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Pestle, Sieve, and Whisk: Useful Words for Cooking Tools
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Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
If you know someone isn’t a great cook, don’t expect them to pick up a spatula come breakfast time.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 11, 2026
The spatula that warped when it got left in the oven?
From Salon ● Mar. 19, 2026
Further, one of the spatula papers turned out to have contained a math error.
From Slate ● Jan. 14, 2026
Norway’s Sven Seljom, a burly 57, described how he uses black Norwegian oats and prefers to use a spatula, to a chorus of boos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 19, 2025
After a while he got frustrated and a little embarrassed, and just started using a spatula like everyone else.
From "When I Was the Greatest" by Jason Reynolds
Geckos’ toes are covered with hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs known as setae, with each seta, in turn, branching into hundreds of tiny, flat, triangular tips called spatulae.
From Textbooks ● Feb. 14, 2019
The huge numbers of spatulae on its setae provide a gecko, shown in Figure 10.8, with a large total surface area for sticking to a surface.
From Textbooks ● Feb. 14, 2019
Alex Greaney and Congcong Hu at Oregon State University described how geckos can achieve this by changing the angle between their spatulae and the surface.
From Textbooks ● Feb. 14, 2019
Although dispersion forces are very weak, the total attraction over millions of spatulae is large enough to support many times the gecko’s weight.
From Textbooks ● Feb. 14, 2019
The spatulae are sometimes very simply and rudely decorated.
From The Mafulu Mountain People of British New Guinea by Williamson, Robert Wood
Working with a group of assistants wielding massive wooden spatulas, Baci's crowning dish was later distributed for everyone to enjoy.
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2025
As epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz points out, “most people don’t leave their spatulas in the fryer and walk away for a quarter of an hour.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 24, 2024
The newest example in this genre: Concerning compounds in black plastic spatulas are migrating into our cooking oil, according to an article Atlantic titled in no uncertain terms: “Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula.”
From Slate ● Nov. 4, 2024
For several days, Mr. Wang wandered around the factory’s showroom, assessing what among the rows of plastic bowls and spatulas he could pitch well.
From New York Times ● Apr. 28, 2023
“So if we’re spatulas, what does that make you? Safety scissors? Or are you just a couple of tools?”
From "Scythe" by Neal Shusterman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
