History

The history and etymology of the word ‘coffee’ have origins dating back over a millennium. In Classical Arabic, the word ‘qahwah’ was used to describe a beverage made from the juice of seeds and consumed as a dark red wine, with such a powerful stimulant effect that it was also used as a medicinal.

Over the centuries and as it spread to different geographical areas, the word ‘qahwah’ evolved into a multitude of variants, such as ‘cavè’, ‘cavà’, ‘cihuè’, ‘caveah’, ‘choana’, ‘chnachout’, ‘caffa’ and, eventually, the Turkish word ‘quahvé’, which means ‘that which lifts’ and is used unequivocally to describe the beverage we now call ‘coffee’.
However, certain academics disagree with this interpretation of the origins of the word ‘coffee’, and claim that it is derived from the name of the Ethiopian region in which the plant originally grew spontaneously - Caffa.