Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

[venta]

Can anyone tell me what they consider to be the defining characteristic (if any) of a fish fork ?

Incidentally, I too can use google. I want to know what you, yourself, with your own mind think constitutes a fish fork.

Comments

[taimatsu]

It's a small fork with three (not four) fairly broad tines.

(If only one is broad, it may be a dessert fork, though these usually have four tines.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Wikipedia is with you on the three-tined thing. Sadly, I'm not. I maintain that three tines is into cake fork territory and fish forks should have four. Very few people seem to agree, though.

My current household has no fishforks (as far as I'm aware) and I can't say I've felt the lack. My parents house has four-tined fish forks, with a strange bobbly hole between the middle pair.

The bobbly hole has always been what I considered defining, but there's very little evidence that this is even widespread, never mind required. This (http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.questodesign.com/shop/images/kitchen/alessi/dry/dry_fish_knife_fork_m.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.questodesign.com/shop/proddetail.php%3Fprod%3Dalessi_4180%252F17&h=240&w=240&sz=7&hl=en&start=48&tbnid=kA88wt-eOFRIJM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2522fish%2Bfork%2522%26start%3D40%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26sa%3DN) is a rather exaggerated version of what I mean.