Forms: α. (6 caoua, chaoua, 7 cahve, coava, coave, cahu, coho, kauhi, kahue, cauwa); β. 7 coffa, caffa, capha; γ. 7 caphe, cauphe, cophie, coffi(e, coffey, coffea, coffy, 7–8 coffe, cophee, caufee, 7– coffee. [ad. Arab. qahwah, in Turkish pronounced kahveh, the name of the infusion or beverage; said by Arab lexicographers to have originally meant ‘wine’ or some kind of wine, and to be a derivative of a vb.-root qahiya ‘to have no appetite.’ Some have conjectured that it is a foreign, perh. African, word disguised, and have thought it connected with the name of Kaffa in the south Abyssinian highlands, where the plant appears to be native. But of this there is no evidence, and the name qahwah is not given to the berry or plant, which is called bunn, the native name in Shoa being būn.
The European langs. generally appear to have got the name from Turkish kahveh, about 1600, perh. through It. caffè; cf. F., Sp., Pg. café, Ger. kaffee, Da., Sw. kaffe. The Eng. coffee, Du. koffie, earlier Ger. coffee, koffee, Russ. kophe, kopheĭ, have o, app. representing earlier au from ahw or ahv.]
1. A drink made by infusion or decoction from the seeds of a shrub (see 3), roasted and ground or (in the East) pounded; extensively used as a beverage, and acting as a moderate stimulant.
Black coffee: strong coffee served without milk or cream (F. café noir).
α. Early foreign forms:
1598. Linschoten’s Trav., 46. (Note of Paludanus) The Turkes holde almost the same manner of drinking of their Chaoua, which they make of a certaine fruit … by the Egyptians called Bon or Ban.
1653. Greaves, Seraglio, 190. Some Cahve house … [marg. Houses Where they drink Cahve].
1659. (title) The Nature of the drink Kauhi, or Coffee, and the Berry of which it is made, Described by an Arabian Physitian, Oxford.
1665. Havers, Sir T. Roe’s Voy. E. Ind. (Socotoru Isl.), For drink water and cahu, black liquor, drank as hot as could be endured.
1702. W. J., trans. Bruyn’s Voy. Levant, xxi. 94. The most usual Liquor … Kahue, which we call Coffee.
β. coffa, caffa, capha.
1603–30. Capt. Smith, Trav. & Adv., 25. Their [Turkes’] best drinke is Coffa of a graine they call Coava.
1631. R. H., Arraignm. Whole Creature, ix. 68. Let them have Chyan from Greece, Caffa from Turkey.
1631. Jorden, Nat. Bathes, xvi. (1669), 151. In the East-Indies and in Turkey … they have a drink called Capha, sold ordinarily in Taverns, and drunk hot.
1632. Lithgow, Trav., IV. 151. A Cup of Coffa.
γ. cauphe, cophie, cophee, coffe, coffee, etc.
1601. W. Parry, Trav. Sir A. Sherley, 10. A certain Liquor which they call Coffe … which will soon intoxicate the brain.
1636. Sir H. Blount, Voy. Levant (1637), 42. One brought a Porcelane dish of Cauphe.
1636. Evelyn, Mem. (1857), I. 11. There came in my time [i.e., 1636] to the College, one Nathaniel Conopios, out of Greece…. He was the first I ever saw drink coffee; which custom came not into England till thirty years after. Ibid. (1664), Sylva, 34. Which might yet be drank daily as our Cophee is.
1665. G. Harvey, Advice agst. Plague, xii. 12. Coffee is recommended against the Contagion.
1691. Wood, Ath. Oxon., II. 658. He made the drink for his own use called Coffey … being the first … that was ever drank in Oxon.
1712–4. Pope, Rape Lock, III. 117. Coffee (which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes).
1796. J. Owen, Trav. Europe, II. 529. Black coffee, as it is called, or coffee without milk, is the general drink.
1824. Byron, Juan, XVI. ci. The evening also waned—and coffee came.
1867. Baker, Nile Tribut., ix. 220. I … sat down … to good curry and rice, and a cup of black coffee.
b. A light repast at which coffee is taken (cf. tea); or a final course at dinner consisting of coffee.
2. The seeds or ‘berries’ (collectively), either raw or roasted; or the powder made by grinding the roasted seeds, from which the drink is made.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 738. This berry Coffa … of which the Turks are great takers.
1685. J. Chamberlayne, Coffee, Tea & Choc., 11. Coffee is a Berry which only grows in the desert of Arabia.
1709. Brit. Apollo, II. No. 19. 4/2. Turkey Coffee at 6s. 4d. per pound, with good allowance to them that buy quantities.
1870. Yeats, Nat. Hist. Comm., 167. Roasting coffee improves its flavour.
3. The tree or shrub from which coffee is obtained; a species of Coffea, chiefly C. arabica, a native of Abyssinia and Arabia, but now extensively cultivated throughout the tropics. It bears fragrant white flowers like those of jessamine, succeeded by red fleshy berries resembling small cherries, each containing two seeds (coffee-beans).
1623. Bacon, Hist. Vitæ & Mortis, Wks. II. 163. Turcae habent etiam in usu herbae genus quam vocant Caphe [transl. (1651), 29. The Turkes use a kind of Herb, which they call Caphe].
1757. Dyer, Fleece, I. 244. Caufee wild or thea, Nutmeg or cinnamon.
1857. Livingstone, Trav., xx. 399. The clayey soil formed by the disintegration of the mica schist and trap, is the favourite soil for the coffee.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon, II. VII. vii. 251. A plantation of coffee is at every season an object of beauty and interest.
4. The name has been commercially applied to various substances or preparations used as imitations of coffee, or substitutes for it, as Dandelion coffee.
b. Swedish coffee: the seeds of Astragalus bæticus. Wild Coffee: a West Indian name of Faramea odoratissima (Miller, Plant Names).
5. attrib. and Comb. a. General combinations, as coffee-bush, -crop, -drink, † -farthing, -husbandry, -imbibing, -lees, † -penny, -plant, -plantation, -planting, -shop, -shrub, -tree, -urn; coffee-brown, -colo(u)red, -faced adjs.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon, VII. vi. (1860), 232 (L.). The belief that a *coffee-bush, once rooted, would continue ever after to bear crops without manure.
1695. Motteux, St. Olon’s Morocco, 151. He was muffl’d up to the Eyes in a *Coffee-colour’d Handkerchief.
1761. Pulteney, in Phil. Trans., LII. 346. A thin coffee-coloured liquor.
1883. A. Dobson, Old-World Idylls, Dead Letter, I. vii. Coffee-coloured laces.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon, VIII. vi. (1860), 180 (L.). The entire *coffee crop of Ceylon.
1659. Howell, in N. & Q., Ser. I. (1850), I. 315/1. This *Coffee-drink hath caused a great sobriety among all nations.
a. 1845. Barham, Ingol. Leg., House-Warming. The flame-colourd Belle, and her *coffee-faced Beau!
1676. Marvell, Mr. Smirke, 4. They had set up this Cock, and would have been content … to have ventur’d their *Coffee Farthings, yea their Easter-Pence by advance, to have a fling at him.
1837. Dickens, Pickw., ii. The operation of shaving, dressing and *coffee-imbibing.
a. 1845. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Lay St. Cuthbert. Dashed in his face a whole cup of hot *coffee-lees.
1673. R. Head, Canting Acad., 97. He did … exercise his hand with the Dice, either for naughty halfpence, or *Coffee-pence.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon (1860), II. 226. The *coffee plant … which is a native of Africa, was known at Yemen at an early period.
1866. Treas. Bot., 311. A Javanese *Coffee-plantation.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon, VIII. vi. (1860), 232 (L.). The healthy condition in which *coffee-planting appears at the present day in Ceylon.
1884. C. Dickens, Dict. Lond., 84/1. Some few *coffee public-houses … were opened.
1866. Treas. Bot., 310. The *Coffee shrub is cultivated throughout the tropics.
1741. Compl. Fam.-Piece, II. iii. 385. The Berries of the *Coffee Tree.
1851. Mayne Reid, Rifle Rangers, i. The breeze … carries on its wings the aroma of the coffee-tree.
1855. J. F. Johnston, Chem. Com. Life, I. (1859), 201. The Coffee-tree … attains a height in some countries not exceeding 8 or 10, but in others averaging from 15 to 20 feet.
1833. Brewster, Nat. Magic, xiii. 328. The inhabitants boil the water in their *coffee-urns.
b. Special combinations: coffee-bean, the seed of the coffee-plant; coffee-berry, the fruit of the coffee-plant also, loosely, the seed; coffee-biggin (see BIGGIN2); coffee-bird, a kind of bullfinch (Pyrrhula violacea) found in Jamaica, which builds its nest in coffee-trees; coffee-blight, a microscopic fungus destructive to coffee-plantations; coffee-borer, a name given to species of boring-beetles that infest the coffee-plant; coffee-bug, an insect (Lecania coffeæ) of the family Coccidæ, very destructive to coffee-plants; coffee-cup, a cup from which coffee is drunk, usually larger than a tea-cup; † coffee-dish, a cup or other vessel for coffee; coffee-grounds sb. pl., the granular sediment remaining in coffee after infusion; coffee-huller, ‘a machine to remove the husk which covers the coffee-grains’ (Knight, Dict. Mech.); coffee-mill, a small hand-mill for grinding roasted coffee-beans; coffee-nib, a coffee-bean; coffee-nut, the fruit of Gymnocladus canadensis, the Kentucky Coffee-tree, used by early settlers as a substitute for coffee; coffee-palace, a large and sumptuous coffee-tavern; † coffee-powder, ground coffee; coffee-rat (see quot.); coffee-roaster, (a) one whose business is to roast coffee-beans; (b) an apparatus for roasting coffee; † coffee-sage = coffee-wit; coffee-shop, (a) a shop where coffee is sold; (b) in India, a place at which the residents of a station (esp. in Upper India) meet for talk over a light breakfast of coffee, toast, etc., at an earlier hour than the regular breakfast of the day; the name is also applied to the gathering, and so to the halt of a regiment for refreshment on an early march, etc.; coffee-stand, (a) a support for a coffee-pot; (b) a stall for the sale of coffee; coffee-tavern, a tavern or public house where coffee and other non-intoxicating drinks and refreshments are sold; coffee-tea, an infusion of the leaves of the coffee-plant; coffee-walk, the space between the rows of trees in a coffee-plantation; † coffee-wit, a wit who frequents coffee-houses (see quots.). See also COFFEE-HOUSE, -MAN, -POT, -ROOM, -WOMAN.
1688. R. Holme, Armoury, II. 81/1. The *Coffee Bean, or Berry … grow two in a thin furrowed husk.
1855. J. W. Croker, in Croker Pap. (1884), III. xxix. 327. Is it possible that raw coffee-beans were issued to the troops in the camp?
1662. Petty, Taxes, 39. The Importation of forty thousand pounds worth of *Coffee-Berries.
1866. Treas. Bot., 310. When ripe, the coffee berries are gathered, and the soft outer pulp removed.
1803. [see BIGGIN2] *Coffee biggin.
1819. Rees, Cycl., s.v., The powdered coffee is sometimes put into a linen bag or strainer suspended at the mouth of a coffee can or, as it is called in the North of England, a coffee biggin.
1839–60. Ure, Dict. Arts (L.). The coffee-biggin with the perforated tin strainer.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon, I. 261. The *coffee-bug … for some years past has devastated some of the plantations in Ceylon.
1762–71. H. Walpole, Vertue’s Anecd. Paint. (1786), V. 95. I have a *coffee-cup of his ware.
1855. Russell, Crimean War, vi. 42 (L.). Begemmed coffee-cups were handed about.
1684. Lond. Gaz., No. 1990/4. Two *Coffee Dishes Plated with Silver.
1764. Low Life, 88–9. Young women … resolving lawful Questions by *Coffee-Grounds.
1691. North, in Autobiog. (1887), 225. I desire … you will get me a very good *coffee mill.
1780. Kippis, in Biog. Brit., II. 315. His father … was a coffee-mill-maker.
1886. Pall Mall Gaz., 22 May, 2/1. I [app. Dr. Barnardo] planned the New Edinburgh Castle as the first *coffee palace in the United Kingdom.
1682. Lond. Gaz., No. 1750/4. Fine *Coffee-Powder, from 2s. 6d. to 3s. per Pound, or the Parched Berries at the same rate.
1859. Tennent, Ceylon, I. 149. The *coffee-rat is an insular variety of the Mus hirsutus of W. Elliott, found in Southern India.
1737. Common Sense (1738), I. 279. I was bred to the Trade of a *Coffee-Roaster.
1855. Browning, How it strikes, 25. The coffee-roaster’s brazier.
1838. Dickens, O. Twist, xxvi. Field-lane … has its barber, its *coffee-shop.
1880. J. W. Sherer, Conjuror’s Dau., 202. After his return to India … one day when he was at *coffee-shop in the morning [etc.].
1890. Brandreth (in Letter), The coffee-shop is essentially a social gathering.
1866. Treas. Bot., 311. A patent … for the introduction of *Coffee-tea.
1832. Ht. Martineau, Demerara, i. 7. They were marched off to their labour in the *coffee-walks.
1667. Dryden, Ind. Emperor, Epil. As for the *Coffee-wits he says not much, Their proper Bus’ness is to Damn the Dutch.
1672. Wycherley, Love in Wood, II. i. Lyd. Now, what is the Coffee-Wit? Dap. He is a lying, censorious, gossiping, quibling wretch, and sets people together by the ears over that sober drink Coffee.
