A spoonful is the amount that a spoon can hold. When a recipe calls for “a spoonful of sugar,” it means enough sugar to fill a spoon. Doctors often prescribe medicine in spoonfuls, like “take two spoonfuls of cough syrup before bed.”

The size of a spoonful depends on the spoon you're using. A teaspoonful (often written as “tsp” in recipes) is much smaller than a tablespoonful (written as “Tbsp”). Bakers and cooks use measuring spoons to get exact amounts, since regular eating spoons vary in size and can make your cookies turn out too sweet or not sweet enough.

You'll sometimes hear the word used figuratively to mean a small amount of something: “Add a spoonful of kindness to your day” or “She shared a spoonful of wisdom.” The famous song from Mary Poppins promises that “a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” meaning that something pleasant can make a difficult task easier.