coffee, oh, that little word that hops from tongue to tongue like a jazz solo – it started in the 15th‑century Kaffa region of Ethiopia, where the locals called the beans “ka’fa.” From there the Arabs picked up the word and turned it into “qahwa,” which in Arabic originally meant “a kind of wine” or “to make something drunk,” interestingly enough, not just coffee. Then the word traveled to Turkish as “kahve,” and from Ottoman Turkish the English got “coffee,” but with a little twist: the spelling “c” is from the Latin “c” that still pronounced “k” in French, so French borrowed it as “café.” Meanwhile, in Hindi it became “kāfi,” while in Japanese it’s “kōhī,” a borrowing that keeps the “h” for a breathy quality. And here’s a quirky side note: in the old English dialects, “coffe” could also mean a sweetened brew of milk and spices, not just the bitter roast we drink now. So the word itself is like a little musical phrase that keeps changing instruments as it moves through languages, each culture adding its own note. Cheers to that, and to your favorite brew!