Where does “cafeteria” come from?
Cafeteria comes from Spanish cafetería, derived from Spanish cafetero, referring to a coffee grower or coffee merchant.
cafeteria (English): A restaurant in which customers select their food...
Definitions
- A restaurant in which customers select their food...
Ancestry of “cafeteria”, step by step
cafeteria traces back through two separate lines of ancestry.
via Spanish cafetería
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Spanish | cafetería | cafeteria; diner |
| 2 | Spanish | cafetero | coffee |
| 3 | Spanish | café | brown; coffee; cafe, coffee shop |
| 4 | French | café | coffee; coffee colour; public house |
| 5 | Italian | caffè | coffee; a café |
| 6 | Turkish | kahve | coffee |
| 7 | Ottoman Turkish | قهوه | coffee |
| 8 | Persian | قهوه | coffee |
| 9 | Arabic | قهوة | wine; coffee; coffee shop, café |
via French cafétéria
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | French | cafétéria | cafeteria |
| 2 | Italian | caffetteria | cafeteria, coffeehouse, café |
| 3 | Italian | -eria | Added to nouns to form other nouns meaning "place... |
| 4 | Spanish | -ería | Turns a noun into a store or restaurant that... |
| 5 | Latin | -āria | used to form feminine counterparts of masculine agent nouns in |
| 6 | Latin | -ārius | er |
| 7 | Proto-Italic | *-āzios | Forms relational adjectives to nouns (and rarely numerals) |