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coffee

KAW-fee · noun

ArabicOttoman TurkishItalianDutchEnglish

Origin

English coffee was borrowed from Dutch koffie, which came from Italian caffè, which came from Ottoman Turkish kahve, which came from Arabic qahwa.

Journey

The facts don't describe a shift in meaning, only a long relay of borrowing — the word kept its core sense as it passed from Arabic through Turkish, Italian, and Dutch into English.

Related words

Coffee is a doublet of café and caffè, and it's cognate with the words for the drink in most other major European languages, which mostly trace back to the same Turkish and Italian forms.

More words

From Ottoman Turkish

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