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Flatware is a mainly American word for the knives, forks, and spoons you eat with. In British English the usual word is . Though actually, some shops stretch flatware to mean all the “flat” things on the table, including plates, as opposed to bowls and cups. For most people, though, a set of flatware means forks, knives, and spoons. It sits next to silverware, which in American English often means those same eating tools even when they are not silver at all. You hear it more in shops and on wedding lists than at the table, where people just say fork or knife.
餐具（刀叉湯匙；美式用語，英式較常說 cutlery）
組成flat + -ware (goods of one kind, as in hardware). From the idea of tools that lie flat, not bowls.
同家族的字
- silverwaresame -ware: eating tools, often the same things, even when not silver
- hardwareshares -ware: a class of goods
- cookwareshares -ware: pots and pans as a class of goods
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
flatwarenoun
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Eating utensils; cutlery, such as forks, knives and spoons.
- A girl without a nightgown or bathing suit. Who had never used two pieces of flatware to eat.
- Flatware should not be allowed to dry between presoaking and washing. It should be washed with the handles down and stored with the handles up.
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Plates, dishes and other relatively flat crockery.
- The artsy set can now go to a Made By You—one of those places where you pay six times more to decorate your own mugs and dishes than it would cost to buy flatware that other people have decorated
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。