Why Do We Call Coffee ‘a Cup of Joe’?

September 29 is National Coffee Day. So raise your mug and take a sip because today we’re looking at some of the weird words we use to talk about coffee.

‘Coffee’ Comes From the Turkish Word ‘Kahveh’

Let’s start with the word “coffee” itself. It comes from the Turkish word “kahveh,” and it seems to have come into European languages around 1600. (6) That’s because coffee beans were first brought from North Africa and the Middle East into Italy in 1615, and then into France in 1644. There, the Turkish ambassador to France, Suleiman Aga, helped to make coffee the “it” beverage in the court of Louis XIV. (4)

The European aristocracy became enchanted by the thick, hot beverage. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

Back then, the word “coffee” appeared in a lot of different forms: chaona, cahve, kauhi, cahu, coffa, and caffa. Eventually, these all settled down into the “coffee” we know today. (6)

Battery Acid, Crumb Coffee, and Unicorn Frappuccinos

Over time, we’ve come to know “coffee” by a bunch of different terms. We’ve called bad or poorly made coffee “battery acid,” “belly wash,” and “sludge.” (4) And a certain brand’s coffee is sometimes called “charbucks” by those don’t appreciate really dark-roasted coffee.

We’ve called fake coffee “Boston coffee,” “Canadian coffee,” and “crumb coffee.”

We’ve called fake coffee “Boston coffee,” “Canadian coffee,” and “crumb coffee.” These so-called coffees were made in the U.S. after the Revolutionary War, when Americans were abstaining from tea because of high British taxes – yet also suffering from high coffee prices. These three coffee substitutes were made, respectively, from rye, peas, and burnt bread. (4)

I can’t really imagine how they would have tasted.

Today, we often refer to coffee by the way it’s made: drip coffee, press coffee, moka pot coffee, instant coffee, and siphon coffee, for example. (3)

Americans have borrowed the British expression “a cuppa,” referring to a cup of tea, and now use it willy-nilly to refer to a cup of coffee. (5)

And of course, we have all the made-up names for coffee we could ever want, courtesy of today’s gourmet coffee shops: unicorn frappucinos and caramel flan machiatos are just two of many. 

Why Do We Call Coffee a ‘Cup of Joe’? 

One of the most common ways we’ve referred to coffee in the past century is to...

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