eating irons

eating irons pl (plural only)

1. (humorous) Knife, fork and spoon; cutlery.
   • 1999, Lydia Laube, Bound for Vietnam‎^[1], →ISBN, pages 24–25:

     But I had the unmitigated pleasure of watching a family of four Chinese struggle to use knives and forks to their bacon and eggs. These were the first eating irons I had seen in a long while.

   • 2000, Shane Maloney, Nice Try: A Murray Whelan Mystery‎^[2], →ISBN, page 25:

     Eating irons in hand, we plonked ourselves down at the round six-seating dining table and thrashed out the ethics of my decision to change football teams.

   • 2005, Lilian MacDonald, Murdoch MacDonald, Phoenix in a Bottle‎^[3], →ISBN, page 49:

     There was even one man in the dining room sitting up at the table with his eating irons at the ready, tapping impatiently on the table, all the while gazing vacantly into the middle distance, whistling a sad little ditty slightly out of key.

• resignation