cafe
/kæˈfeɪ/noun
Coffeehouse or casual restaurant serving drinks and food
From Italian, transmitted through French coffee (Coffee).
Lineage
The story
By 1615, merchants and travelers had brought the beverage to Venice; France encountered it in the 1650s, and the first public European café may have opened in Marseille in 1660. The drink’s name traveled with the drink: Italian caffe became French café, then entered English as cafe in 1802. A café was therefore not originally a chic little place for laptops and pastries, but a new European social machine built around an unfamiliar, stimulating drink. By 1922, “café society” described the fashionable people who circulated through dining spots and nightclubs. The word even acquired a distinct South African sense for a small general store or corner shop—proof that a café can be less Parisian salon and more neighborhood errand stop.
Modern usage
In South African usage, a small general store or corner shop; a low-trust slang source also records an unrelated vulgar meaning.
- Heard in
- South African English · slang
- See
- Urban Dictionary entry defining cafe as a South African small general store
Words from the same roots
coffee · Italian, transmitted through French, ‘Coffee; a coffeehouse serving it’
Derivedcoffee, cafeteria, coffeehouse, restaurant
Cognatescafé society