Coffee
2024The taste of a word:
When words enter a language, they adapt to the preferences and requirements of its speakers. Coffee is a perfect example. Each society that adopted it developed unique recipes, rituals, and social structures around it. Similarly, the word "coffee" has influenced every language it encountered. This story explores how the meaning of the word evolved over 15 centuries in culture-specific ways, and how recent social media is shaping new global understandings.