Here is an internet article by one man, John D’Agostino on the possible origin of the expression "cup of joe" for coffee in American English.

http://hav-a-cup-o-joe.blogspot.com/2005/07/where-does-term-cup-o-joe-come-from.html

I first began hearing the expressions "cup of Joe" and "cup of java" for coffee in the 1980’s as expresso coffee places like Starbucks began appearing and expanding. There are other slang terms for coffee too. Some Blacks I’ve known refer to it as "a cup of mud." Other languages must have slang terms for coffee too; afterall, the Arabs, Armenians and Greeks are all big coffee drinkers as well as the Americans . However,  I haven’t investigated them. Coffee has also been called the all-American brew and is a drink that several revolutions were plotted over including the American Revolution and the French Revolution.  :)

Dickens cryptically used the word, as an alternative to tea.  Probably the first reference, but I would guess it’s older,  and I’d guess that ‘Java’ is derived from ‘Joe’, but I really have no idea where these came from. The truck-stop reference is unlikely unless they were unusually well-read and well-traveled and prone to discussing these things over a cup of mud (which is a good description of what americans drink in the morning).

Was coffee related to the country of Java by any chance…?

J

In the late 17th century, coffee-plants got imported on Java and in the 18th century the coffee business there got run by the Dutch United East Indian Company (VOC in Dutch). Java and large parts of the Indonesian archipelago later became colonies of The Netherlands.

Frank

I can’t think of a nickname for coffee in Portuguese, but we use the diminutive (and so do so many other languages) to refer to it as a nice cup of coffee: cafezinho.

espresso, expresso The strong coffee made by forcing steam under pressure through finely ground coffee beans is known in Italian as caffè espresso, or just espresso for short.  Contrary to a popular belief of English speakers, the espresso means not "fast" but "pressed out" - it refers to the process by which the coffee is made, not the speed of the process.  The idea that caffè espresso means "fast coffee" may have contributed somewhat to the occurrence in English of the variant expresso, or the variant may have originated simply because it more closely resembles a familiar English word than does espresso.  In any case, expresso is in widespread use, both on menus and in edited prose:

Jérôme sidled to the expresso bar - Jerome Charyn, Antaeus, Winter 1976

... thick expresso with a shot of Calvados - Patricia Wells, N.Y. Times, 6 June 1982

Several current dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition, and the OED Supplement, recognize expresso as as established variant, but others omit it altogether or treat it as a mistake.  Espresso is the more common form.

From Merriam-Webster’s Concise Dictionary of English Usage

If you ask me (and you didn’t), I don’t like expresso* because it’s neither English nor Italian.

I just remembered Czech has the standard word for coffee káva and the more colloquial word kafe.

Brazilian dude, who, although coming from the leading coffee-producing country in the world (or is it Colombia?), doesn’t like coffee.

*Expresso is (I) express in Portuguese (from expressar) or express as fast.

I like turkish coffee, I have an ibrik and a big selection of powders to put in it. But last time I spoke to someone from Turkey, he used a totally different word for the little can-on-a-stick.  And I forgot what they call coffee in Arabic,  but I think it struck me as an unusual word. Any help with my
lapsing vocabulary?

[‘qah.wa]

English coffee is not so much removed from it as Japanese [koochii] (ch as in German ich).

If i remember well, it’s the same as "uma bica" in Portugal, no (?)
In Dutch a cup of coffee is (was) sometimes called "een bakje troost" (lit. bakje: little box; troost: consolation). Never found out why.

Frank

I’ve never seen bica used in that sense, maybe it’s only used in Portugal.  My dictionary doesn’t have any entry that resembles that definition given by you, but again my dictionary is a bit dated.  I’ll look online.

Brazilian dude

Yes, bica it is:

s. m.,
pequeno canal ou telha por onde corre a água ou outro líquido;

líquido que corre e cai em veia ou fio;

Ictiol.,
peixe acantopterígeo;

prov.,
pão achatado que termina em bico;

Lisboa, pop.,
café servido e tomado em chávena própria;

s. f., Beira,
(no pl. ) refeição em que as famílias dos noivos celebram os proclamas de casamento;

estar à -: estar prestes a tocar-lhe a vez ou a realizar-se;

- aberta: processo de fermentação do vinho;

suar em -: suar muito.

I just knew the first and the last uses of bica.  That’s lamentable.

Brazilian dude

flaminius,
[‘qah.wa] it is. I think it sounded like agua to me,  and tasted like it too, so I forewent the local joe and had the saqqara.

The pronunciation of my last post is that of Standard Arabic (lugat al-fuskha).  In Egypt and elsewhere "qof" is slided back to the glottal position, which bears no distinctive power in English.

I note it interesting since what passes as Arabic coffee in my place is really thick and strong whereas what passes as American coffee is as thin as water.

Flam, no coffee drinker

Flam, I also have heard that about Arabic coffee (very strong/concentrated).  Many places here in the US do have pretty bad coffee, in my opinion.  But coffee is a drink that most adults brag as being an "acquired taste"... shorthand for me that they don’t like it either, but they just drink it anyway.

For me, coffee is not good at all unless it is sufficiently strong (I use 1-1/2 bags in the maker at work when I make it), has plenty of sugar, and a quality creamer is available.  (The powdered stuff is, well, nasty.)

-Tim

Oh, and I always thought the ‘joe’ originated with the US military, for some reason.  They are famous for making up words, after all.

-Tim

[quote author=Tim link=board=idiom;num=1125697721;start=0#13 date=09/07/05 at 02:34:01]Oh, and I always thought the ‘joe’ originated with the US military, for some reason.  They are famous for making up words, after all.

I’m pretty sure it originated in the Navy, actually.

but you know what soldiers are like - swiping anything that isn’t nailed down.

Azh
(g,d,r)