Q: Due to their similarity, can a butter knife be passed off as a fish knife in a formal setting (where there should be no butter knife present to reveal the ruse)?

Miss Manners says: If it is one of those notched butter servers, sure. Miss Manners promises not to tell.

Your Head Bitch says: Have you been stockpiling butter servers? Because I agree that a notched butter server looks so much like a fish knife that no one will look twice at it, but who has enough butter servers for everyone in their silver service? As far as I know, most people only have one. All that being said, I think most people wouldn’t know a fish knife if it hopped up and tried to flake them. If you use the butter server to serve the fish and just regular knives at the table, I’m certain that no one will have either the knowledge or gall to say anything about it afterward. Just make sure you’ve done a good job getting the bones out, please.

And the fish won’t be happy about it pretty much no matter what, so I say fuck what he thinks.