café

Forms

café m (plural cafés)^[1] The first records spell it caphé and caphe, cophe;^[2] Feijoo still writes caffé in 1734.^[3][2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French café, which probably took it from Italian or directly from Turkish; this is the view of the DHLE and Wiktionary.^[3][1] The DLE has it instead as borrowed from Italian caffè, and Corominas from Turkish through both Italian and French.^[4][5][6] Corriente leaves open which of the two languages it came through.^[7]

The European words come from Ottoman Turkish قهوه (kahve), from Arabic قهوة (qahwa), which was also applied to wine and was originally one of its names.^[5][6][8] Gómez de Silva mentions the proposal that the Arabic word comes from Kefa, a region of south-western Ethiopia.^[9]

According to Corominas, coffee reached Spain from Turkey by way of Venice and France;^[5][6] the word is recorded in Italian from 1655 and in French from 1670.^[5][6] The Italian record begins earlier, with cavèe in a Venetian ambassador's report of 1585.^[10] The Spanish traveller Teixeira wrote ⟨kaoah⟩ in 1610, taking the word directly from Arabic, but that form did not survive.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The DHLE's first record is from 1680, in the form caphé, in S. de Ferrus's Nouvelle grammaire espagnole, in phrases of everyday conversation about the drink.^[3] In 1689 J. B. Juanini praised its medical virtues and explained that the drink was being introduced in Spanish ports.^[3] Sobrino's Spanish–French dictionary of 1705 is the first dictionary to record it.^[6][3]

Semantic evolution

In 1729 the Diccionario de Autoridades said that the custom of drinking it had come from Asia not long before, and guessed at an Arabic word caoveh or cahue meaning “strength”.^[11][6][5] The CDH has it for a colour, de color de café, in Feijoo in 1733, and in 1740 he mentions a taberna de caffé in Paris.^[2] Salvá in 1846 recorded the sense “place for drinking coffee”, and the Academy defined it in 1869 as tree, bean, drink and establishment.^[12][13]

The first record in the Americas is from Bogotá in 1761.^[14] The tree is cafeto from 1836, a Cuban formation from cafetero;^[5][6] cafetal dates from 1832 and cafetería was created in Mexico.^[5][6] In most of Latin America café is also the adjective “brown”, and in the River Plate, Chile and Peru it is colloquially a scolding.^[15][4] Spanish passed the word on to the languages of the Philippines, as kape.^[1]

Timeline

• 1680 – first record, as caphé, in Ferrus's Nouvelle grammaire espagnole.^[3]
• 1689 – Juanini describes the drink as newly arrived in Spanish ports.^[3]
• 1705 – Sobrino's dictionary records the word.^[6][3]
• 1729 – Autoridades calls its use recent;^[11][6] cafetera is first recorded the same year.^[11][6]
• 1740 – Feijoo mentions a coffee house in Paris.^[2]
• 1761 – first record from the Americas, in Bogotá.^[14]
• 1836 – cafeto for the tree, in Cuba.^[5][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. The coffee tree, cafeto.^[4]
2. The seed of this tree, the coffee bean.^[4][16]
3. The drink made by infusion of the roasted and ground beans: Tomo el café sin azúcar.^[4][1]
4. A cup or glass of coffee: Pedimos tres cafés.^[4]
5. A café, an establishment where coffee, other drinks and light food are served.^[4][1]
6. (colloquial, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay) A sharp reprimand.^[4][15]

Adjective

1. (chiefly Latin America) brown, the colour of roasted coffee.^[4][15][1]

Word family

• cafetera
• cafetero
• cafeína
• cafetal
• cafetería
• cafeto
• descafeinado
• poscafé

Related words

• Italian caffè
• French café

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. café
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Real Academia Española (2013–), Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (DHLE), https://www.rae.es/dhle, p. s.v. café
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. café
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 735
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. café
7. ^ Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. café
8. ^ Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 268
9. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México
10. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
11. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 2, 50
12. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 187
13. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 133
14. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. café
15. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. café
16. ^ Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial