Coffee

Food And Drink
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A dark brewed drink valued for stimulation and aroma. It often suggests wakefulness, urban life, conversation, or solitude.

Detailed Definition
Poets use coffee to stage moments of alertness: an early kitchen, a late-night desk, a café table, or a sleepless city. Its bitterness and warmth can mirror thought itself, especially in poems about writing, work, and memory. Coffeehouses also carry literary associations with debate and public life. A cooling cup may mark interrupted intimacy, while its lingering scent can summon a place or person with unusual force.
Example
Example in poetry:
T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” uses coffee spoons to portray a life measured in repetitive social rituals; Coffee can establish a modern urban setting, such as a café, office, train station, or sleepless apartment; A poet might write, “The coffee cooled between us, dark as the question neither asked,” using the drink to embody emotional distance; The smell of morning coffee can serve as a small sensory detail that signals routine, awakening, or homesickness
Additional Notes
Coffee often sets a scene of morning alertness, cafés, work, conversation, insomnia, or solitary reflection.
Also Known As
Java Joe
Skip to main content