Silver Spoon - Variants

Variants

The term "gold spoon" is much less commonly used, but finds occasional use, such as the 1840 American Gold Spoon Oration criticizing then-president Martin Van Buren for his supposedly luxurious lifestyle.

There are similar expressions in other languages. For example, in Portuguese, an expression translated as "born in a gold cradle" is equivalent contextually to the English, "born with a silver spoon."

The song "Substitute" by The Who references being "born with a plastic spoon in my mouth", as a purposeful inversion of the phrase, referring to being born into poverty.