coffee

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English[edit]

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roasted coffee beans
coffee (beverage)

Etymology[edit]

From Dutch koffie (“coffee”) [from 1582], from Italian caffè (“coffee”), from Ottoman Turkish قهوه‏ (kahve, “coffee”), from Arabic قَهْوَة‏ (qahwa, “coffee, a brew”). Cognates include Turkish kahve. The Arabic word has been said to originally have referred to wine, although some sources instead claim it traces back to the name of the Kaffa region of Ethiopia, which is an Omotic word.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

coffee (countable and uncountable, plural coffees)

  1. (uncountable) A beverage made by infusing the beans of the coffee plant in hot water.
    • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069:, II.5.1.v:
      The Turks have a drink called coffa (for they use no wine), so named of a berry as black as soot, and as bitter […], which they sip still of, and sup as warm as they can suffer […].
    • 1907, Robert William Chambers, chapter IV, in The Younger Set (Project Gutenberg; EBook #14852), New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, published 1 February 2005 (Project Gutenberg version), OCLC 24962326:
      "He was here," observed Drina composedly, "and father was angry with him." ¶ "What?" exclaimed Eileen. "When?" ¶ "This morning, before father went downtown." ¶ Both Selwyn and Lansing cut in coolly, dismissing the matter with a careless word or two; and coffee was served—cambric tea in Drina's case.
    • 2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68:
      […] a new study of how Starbucks has largely avoided paying tax in Britain […] shows that current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate […] “stateless income”: […]. In Starbucks’s case, the firm has in effect turned the process of making an expensive cup of coffee into intellectual property.
  2. (countable) A serving of this beverage.
    • 2008, Agnes Poirier, The Guardian, 12 April:
      As I sip a coffee at Brasserie Balzar, two well-known intellectuals, one publisher and a Sorbonne professor were discussing Sarkozy's future: "He won't finish his mandate" says one.
  3. The seeds of the plant used to make coffee, misnamed ‘beans’ due to their shape.
  4. A tropical plant of the genus Coffea.
  5. (Discuss(+) this sense) A pale brown colour, like that of milk coffee.
    coffee colour:    
  6. The end of a meal, when coffee is served.
    He did not stay for coffee.

Synonyms[edit]

Translations[edit]

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

Adjective[edit]

coffee (not comparable)

  1. Of a pale brown colour, like that of milk coffee.
  2. Of a table: a small, low table suitable for people in lounge seating to put coffee cups on

Translations[edit]

Derived terms[edit]

Terms derived from the noun or adjective coffee

See also[edit]

Verb[edit]

coffee (third-person singular simple present coffees, present participle coffeeing, simple past and past participle coffeed)

  1. (intransitive) To drink coffee.
    • 1839, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, The Clockmaker
      I rushed into my cabin, coffeed, wined, and went to bed sobbing.
    • 2010, Patrick Day, Too Late in the Afternoon: One Man's Triumph Over Depression
      It was exactly 11 a.m. We had been coffeeing for one hour, and our coffee cups were empty.

Further reading[edit]

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