Word for Wednesday: Americano

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Our Word for Wednesday theme for June is coffee. 

Coffee is made by roasting and grinding coffee beans and creating an infusion. The word coffee entered English around 1600 via the Dutch ‘koffie’, which comes from the Turkish ‘kahveh', from the Arabic ‘qahwah’.

So far we’ve looked at the words espresso,  cappuccino, macchiato, and latte. Our final word of the month is Americano. 

An Americano is made by adding hot water to espresso, and the word is simply Italian for ‘American coffee’. One popular theory behind the origin of the Americano is that American GIs, when posted in Italy, used to dilute their espresso with hot water in order to make it more like the drip coffee they were accustomed to. In Italy, the word Americano is also sometimes used in reference to drip coffee.


30 Jun 2021
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