spatula

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A small implement having a broad, flat, flexible blade that is used to mix, spread, or lift material.
2. n. A device, such as a small wooden paddle, used to press down the tongue during an examination of the mouth or throat.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A broad flat blade or strip of metal or wood, with unsharpened edges and a commonly rounded outer end (which may be spoon-shaped), and a handle: used for spreading, smoothing, scraping up, or stirring substances, comminuting powders, etc. Spatulas are usually set in handles like those of table-knives, and are of many shapes, sizes, and materials. Those used by druggists, painters, etc., are comparatively long and narrow, straight, and made of more or less fiexible steel. Fresco-painters use a trowel-shaped or spoon-shaped spatula for spreading wax or mortar upon the surface which is to receive the painting.
2. n. A genus of Anatinæ, having the bill much longer than the head or tarsus, twice as wide at the end as at the base, there broadly rounded and spoon-shaped, with narrow prominent nail and numerous protrusive lamellæ; the shoveler-ducks or souchets. The tail is short and pointed, of fourteen feathers. S. clypeata is the common shoveler (see cut under shoveler), S. rhynchotis is Australian, S. platalea is South American, S. capensis is South African, and S. variegata inhabits New Zealand. Also Rhynchaspis, Clypeata, and Spathulea.

Wiktionary

1. n. A kitchen utensil consisting of a flat surface attached to a long handle, used for turning, lifting, or stirring food.
2. n. A palette knife.
3. n. A thin hand tool, often made of nickel, for handling chemicals or other materials, when weighing, etc.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An implement shaped like a knife, flat, thin, and somewhat flexible, used for spreading paints, fine plasters, drugs in compounding prescriptions, etc. Cf. Palette knife, under palette.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a turner with a narrow flexible blade
2. n. a hand tool with a thin flexible blade used to mix or spread soft substances