قهوة

Where it comes from

Derived by medieval philologists from the root ق ه ي (q h y), relating to satiety, with the meaning of "wine", explained by Ibn Manẓūr that "it was named thus since it surfeits the drinker of it and takes away his desire". The "coffee" sense is ultimately of disputed origin. According to Watkins, the original meaning could have been "dark stuff," related to Hebrew כָּהָה (kehé, “dull, weak, dim”), Aramaic ܩܗܐ (qəhā, “to be(come) blunt, to be(come) dull”), Arabic قَهِيَ (qahiya, “to be/become weak, lack hunger”).

Originally meaning a "brew", the word referred to mulled wine, and later to coffee, possibly since intoxicants were traditionally mixed and served hot in a similar manner to coffee, featuring many overlapping spices and the hospitality etiquette of modern-day Arab coffee culture. Culturally other words were re-purposed from wine to coffee with the advent of the traditionalist Muslim prohibition on intoxication. Other synonyms for "to brew" utilize the same trilateral roots as wine and intoxicants; see خ م ر (ḵ m r), meaning to cover over, presumably with hot water, to let sit, to steep, to let ferment or to give suitable time for food to be prepared for use.

Alternatively, some sources trace the term back to the Omotic Kaffa, the name of the region in Ethiopia where coffee was first grown; however, the word used to mean wine in earlier Arabic, more than half a millennium before this Kingdom existed, which makes any associations dubious.