Last week, my son and I were (for some reason I can’t recall) talking about caffeine, and how it occurs naturally in coffee. Which led him to ask, “Is that where the word caffeine comes from? From coffee?”
Insert me going, “Huh. You know, I bet it does…” and pulling up the etymology site on my computer (by which I mean clicking into the tab that is always open, LOL). And sure enough!
Caffeine comes directly from the German Kaffe and was in fact originally spelled kaffein. Named for it because it naturally occurs in coffee. Pretty straight forward! The stimulant itself was identified around 1830. So there you go. Score one for the boy who doesn’t even like that glorious brew like the rest of the family does… 😉
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.