cappuccino

Meaning

Noun

• An Italian coffee-based beverage made from espresso and milk that has been steamed and/or frothed.
• A cup of this beverage.
• Any of various similar drinks.
• Capuchin or the color, especially cappuccino brown.

Origin

• 1904, borrowed from Italian cappuccino, from Viennese German Kapuziner ("Capuchin"), due to the similarity of the color of the beverage to the monastic habit of dark brown; compare Franziskaner, a contemporary coffee drink with more milk and hence a lighter color, more similar to the latter monks’ habits of light brown.
• {{cite-book
• |author=Robert W. Thurston
• |author2=Jonathan Morris
• |author3=Shawn Steiman
• |chapter=The Espresso Menu
• |title=Coffee: A Comprehensive Guide to the Bean, the Beverage, and the Industry
• |url=https://rowman.com/isbn/9781442214415/coffee-a-comprehensive-guide-to-the-bean-the-beverage-and-the-industry
• |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield
• |year=2013
• |page=269–270
• |pageurl=https://books.google.com/books?id=GQh1AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA269
• |isbn=978-1-4422-1442-2
• The German term Kapuziner is in turn a loan translation from Italian cappuccino ("Capuchin") (thus the Italian word for the coffee beverage is a reborrowing), from Italian cappuccio ("hood, cowl") + -ino, due to the hood of the Capuchin monks’ habits, from Italian cappa ("hood, cowl") + -uccio (note two diminutive suffixes), in turn from Late Latin cappa (English cape).
• Capuchin, also from Italian cappuccino (via Middle French capuchin).
• In English attested 1904 as “[small] coffee mixed with milk”, 1933 as “express strong coffee diluted with milk”; and still in 1931 as “black coffee mixed with a little milk”; the modern sense of a coffee drink made with espresso at a bar presumably developed in the 1930s in Italian, and was borrowed into English. though by 1848 and into the early 1900s the Kapuziner had come to mean a drink of coffee and milk, with more coffee than milk, by contrast with the Melange, which had more milk than coffee; this usage continues to the present.
• The etymology is confusing for a number of reasons. Firstly, the sense of “coffee beverage” originated in German, not in Italian, but the word (in the sense “Capuchin monk”) was loan-translated from Italian into German and then the sense of “coffee beverage” was reborrowed back into Italian. Secondly, the beverage that it refers to has changed over time: the modern international beverage is based on the Italian espresso-based, milk foam-topped drink of the mid-1900s, not the Viennese drink of coffee plus milk or cream from the 1800s; in Viennese coffeehouses, the Kapuziner and Franziskaner are still served, while the Viennese equivalent of the modern foam-topped cappuccino is the Melange. Thirdly, the association of the word with the drink is sometimes (erroneously) believed to be due to the “cap” of foam in the modern espresso-based form of the drink, though at the time the word was coined (in the 1700s) the drink only consisted of adding milk or cream to coffee: espresso machines date to the 1880s and foam-topped cappuccinos date to the mid-1900s, long after the word was established.