Being spooned is an Old School RuneScape meme or slang term that is the opposite of going dry. It means having a really lucky account or getting many drops way before their expected drop rate. When you say “I got spooned a T-bow” you mean you got super lucky on the drop and didn’t spend endless hours at CoX before receiving it. It is one of the more recent memes with the earliest mentions dating back only a few years in late 2019 and early 2020, and it reached its peak in 2024.
Other Old School RuneScape memes are much older and entered the game very early. Memes like “fucking iron” or “spoon” are recent additions though.
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Variations and Usage of the OSRS Spoon Meme
Spoon is used like a verb, an adjective, and a noun and it preserves its meaning, conveying that someone obtained a drop at an unexpected rate which is considered extremely lucky. If you’re not interested in the linguistics talk, or in the meaning behind feel free to jump to the meme origins.
Verb
As a verb it’s used both in passive constructions like “to get spooned“, “to be spooned“, and in active constructions like “I spooned…” and it means to receive something unexpectedly fast.
Adjective
As an adjective it collocates mainly with “drop” or the name of the actual drop, for example: “what’s your biggest spooned drop“, “spooned tangleroot“, or ” “spooned collection log” and it means unexpected or lucky.
Noun
As a noun it is used in reference to a drop, in contexts like “post your biggest spoon” or “is this the definition of a spoon“, with the same meaning of lucky and unexpected drop. It can also be used in reference to players themselves who ask questions such as “am I the biggest spoon?” or who proudly declare “I’m an absolute spoon” somewhat altering the meaning to player who received an unexpected lucky drop.
Linguistic Roots of the OSRS Spoon Meme
The spooned meme has several linguistic roots: Spoon-fed, silver spoon, and spoony.
Spoon-fed
The vast majority of players speculate that the OSRS meme comes from the term spoon-fed, and I have found some very interesting definitions of this term.
- “treated with excessive solicitude; pampered” (from dictionary.com)
- “given no opportunity to act or think for oneself” (from dictionary.com)
- “to present (information) so completely as to preclude independent thought” (from merriam-webster)
- “If you think that someone is being given too much help with something and is not making enough effort themselves, you can say they are being spoon-fed” (from Collins)
Looking at these definitions they do make sense at a deep level for the in game meaning. Any player feels a bit pampered when they receive a good drop, without it even being spooned. And when you’re spooned enough, you might not even fully learn the mechanics of the boss you’re killing before getting the item you were going for, so that addresses the missed opportunity to think for oneself.
The last definition covers the point that not enough effort was put towards obtaining the spooned drop. Semantically, the spoon meme is one of the most accurate memes in game.
Silver Spoon
While no one knows for sure, it is also speculated that the meme could come from the expression “silver spoon”. This one is historically rooted and it refers to how cutlery was a great indicator of the social class and financial background of any individual.
In most cultures, the rural communities used bone and horn cutlery, the middle class used wood, iron, and alloys cutlery, while the nobles used silver, gold, or ivory cutlery, with the silver being the most commonly used of the three. Times changed, but the silver spoon remained as a linguistic proof of the past discrepancies and a present reference to those with a wealthy background.
However, this idea only covers the drops which are valuable through the wealth they bring and no through rarity such as pets or untradeable quality of life items or cosmetic items which can also be referred to as spoons.
Spoony
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, spoony means silly or foolish, often associated with someone being foolishly in love or sentimental. The pink lenses through which someone who is in love foolishly ignores negative aspects of life resemble the hype of a player who just got a super lucky drop and whose excitement disregards all the other grinds that are to come. Semantically it makes sense since any spooned drop has the power to bring that excitement and emotional response.
Early mentions of the OSRS Spoon Meme
Even though this meme is so popular now that you might think it’s been part of the game’s culture for as long as it existed, spoon only became a thing in Old School RuneScape in late 2019 and early 2020.
Spoon-fed on Ngram
Interestingly, the birth of the meme does coincide with the term “spoon-fed” being used more and more in books, according to the Ngram. The term started an abrupt spike starting with the early 2000s and it’s at its peak now in the 2020s.
First Trace on Youtube: Christmas Spoon | December 26th 2019
The very first trace of spoon dates back to 26th December 2019 when a very small channel uploaded a video with the title “Christmas Spoon! (Tome of Fire)”.
First Trace of the Spoon Meme on X | January 29th 2020
This is the second recorded mention of the meme spoon on X. It dates back to January 29th 2020 and it contains the text “final preps before Wintertodt, can’t wait to be spooned again”. The post appeared on Twitter (now X) and it belongs to Old School RuneScape streamer Muts or MutsOSRS, who seems to have had a real impact in popularizing the meme. While the post in itself only got one heart at the time, it is proof that the term was used within the streaming community.
Another Post on X | March 23rd 2020
Almost two months without any trace of the spoon meme passed before this other post appeared on X. The post contains the text “once again the iron got spooned 102 kc, 6th overall spectral on OSRS call me the spectral man :)”.
First Big Engagement Spooned | March 26th 2020
While not the first ever proof of the spoon meme, this is the first spoon post that got a lot of engagement, totaling 353 hearts and 30 replies. The post belongs to lakeosrs, who is another OSRS streamer, and it contains the text “bandos dry streak is paying off i guess cause i just spooned a 72 kc hydra’s claw for the lance” together with a relevant screenshot.
The Golden Spoon | March 30th 2020
Just a few days later, this post appeared on X. It contains a screenshot and the text “the 2 items my ironman went 4k dry on get spooned to my hc idek man”. As a reply a photo of a golden spoon is served and this is linked to the silver spoon as a proof of status.
Spooned Already | May 30th 2020
Exactly two months later, youtuber Impostor Syndrome uploaded a video titled “HCIM – Spooned Already! First 99”, contributing further to the spread of the meme.
Confirmation Spoon is a New Meme | June 19th 2020
This post on Reddit was created to ask about the new term everyone is using, spoon. It states “I’ve seen a lot of clips on those YouTube channels that show a bunch of different streamers and they call themselves spoons? What does that mean”. It is a confirmation that in the summer of 2020 spoon was already adopted by many streamers, but it was still not used on such a large scale that everyone was aware of its meaning, confirming the meme had just entered the mainstream use.
The Silver Spoon | June 20th 2020
Just one day later, on June 20th 2022, this post confirms that many scapers associate being spooned in OSRS with being fed with a silver spoon, combining the meaning of low effort from “spoon fed” and the given wealth status of the spoons made from precious materials. The post is titled “I am the lightning rod of bad RNG. I go dry so others may be fed by silver spoons” and it shows a collection log of a scaper who was still dry on the Kraken pet after over 23 thousand kills – and as someone who went dry. It is also the first post on Reddit with a big engagement rate. It got over 800 upvotes so it significantly contributed to the spread of the spoon meme.
Discord First Spoon | June 20th 2020
The very same day, the first record of the spoon meme was used in the official Old School RuneScape discord. While players have been using “spoon fed” or “silver spoon” referring to unexpected lucky drops on the official discord since 2018, this was the first time when someone used the one word meme together with a screenshot of the collection log where they got 2 Vorkath heads within 39 kills.
Massive Spoon | June 22nd 2020
Two days later and another post titled “massive spoon” appeared, and it revealed how a scaper got Rocky at just 37 Thieving.
The Golden Spoon on Reddit | July 27th 2020
5 Days later another small engagement post appeared on reddit. Titled “First Hydra task. Golden spoon?”, the post contains a printscreen a 6 out of 11 uniques obtained during the very first Hydra task (152 kc)
OSRS Spoon meme | Late 2020
Posts on Reddit, X, and Youtube, and mentions of the meme kept appearing in the final months of 2020 as more and more content creators alongside other players from the community started using spoon more and more to describe unexpected lucky drops.
Spoon vs Spoon Fed vs Silver/ Golden Spoon
Before 2019 scapers used the terms “spoon fed”, “silver spoon”, or “golden spoon” to refer to unexpected super lucky drops. Gradually, starting with late 2019 and continuing up to date, the term has slowly but surely been replaced by the simpler one word version that conveys the same meaning. Currently, players are more inclined to simply say “spoon” than spoon fed, and while the terms have been used in parallel for a while the simplified form is currently used with a much greater frequency than the almost obsolete longer terms.
The shift from “spoon-fed,” “silver spoon,” and “golden spoon” to the simpler “spoon” in the Old School RuneScape community highlights a common linguistic phenomenon known as lexical simplification. This process occurs when language users favor shorter, more efficient expressions over longer, more complex ones, especially in fast-paced environments like online gaming. By reducing the term to a single word, players communicate more efficiently.
Additionally, the change reflects the role of language as a social tool. Saying spoon or spooned instead of the longer versions not only simplifies dialogue but also helps players feel that they belong and builds up a sense of shared identity within the community.
Spoon an OSRS Official Slang Term | 2023
Spoon has continued to spread in the following years and it was soon an official slang term, when the spoonfed entry in the official wiki slang dictionary got expanded by Yoshifan12 who added spoon and spooned as alternatives for spoonfed and expanded on the meaning of the meme.
Current Use of the Spoon Meme
Currently the meme is broadly spread and used within the Old School RuneScape community and there are less and less players who are unaware of its meaning. Just on the official OSRS subreddit, there are 3 posts featuring spoon within the last 24 hours as I’m writing this.
Further evolution of Spoon
As any meme and language in general, spoon keeps evolving taking different forms to reveal the same meaning. This post, which is just a few days old, for example, takes the meme to the next level, by slightly modifying the word and giving it a collective twist, since it’s not just one spooned item, but an almost full collection log that was spooned, and referred to in a plastic language: spoonery. This playful adaptation not only adds nuance to the term but also reflects the community’s ongoing creativity, expanding the scope of “spoon” to encapsulate other contexts in a way that is both relatable and amusing.
From a linguistic perspective, the “spoonery” highlights the creative and dynamic nature of morphological processes in language. By appending the suffix “-ery,” the term transforms from a concrete noun into an abstract one, signifying a state, practice, or collective phenomenon related to being spooned. This process, known as derivation, not only extends the term’s semantic range but also deepens its connection to the original meme.
Final Thoughts on Spoon!
I wish I got spooned more often, but my account gravitates towards being dry more often than not. Get spooned soon!
