Word.ws English Dictionary

spoon theory

spoon theory noun: an informal metaphor for chronic illness or disability that uses "spoons" to represent the finite units of physical and mental energy that a person has available for daily tasks.

Noun

spoon theory (uncountable)

  1. An informal metaphor for chronic illness or disability that uses "spoons" to represent the finite units of physical and mental energy that a person has available for daily tasks.

Origin of spoon theory

Coined by writer and disability advocate Christine Miserandino in a 2003 blog post recounting an incident in which she explained living with lupus to a friend in a diner by gathering spoons from other tables to serve as visual props for a metaphor.

Questions about spoon theory

What does spoon theory mean?
Spoon theory means an informal metaphor for chronic illness or disability that uses "spoons" to represent the finite units of physical and mental energy that a person has available for daily tasks.
What part of speech is spoon theory?
Spoon theory is a noun.

Words near spoon theory in the dictionary

  1. spoon sled
  2. spoon straw
  3. spoon straws
  4. spoon sweet
  5. spoon sweets
  6. spoon theory
  7. spoon warmer
  8. spoon warmers
  9. spoon worm
  10. spoon worms
  11. spoon-billed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spoon theory (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “spoon theory.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spoon_theory. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.