As a piece of cutlery or kitchenware, a fork is a tool consisting of a handle with several narrow tines on one end. The fork is a primarily Western utensil, whereas in East Asia chopsticks have been more prevalent. Today, forks are increasingly available throughout East Asia. The usually metal utensil is used to lift food to the mouth or to hold ingredients in place while they are being cut by a knife. Food can be lifted either by spearing it on the tines, or by holding it on top of the tines, which are often curved slightly. A fork is shaped in the form of a trident but curved at the joint of the handle to the points.

In computing, particularly in the context of the Unix operating system and its workalikes, fork is an operation whereby a process creates a copy of itself. It is usually a system call, implemented in the kernel. Fork is the primary (and historically, only) method of process creation on Unix-like operating systems.