In this era
of fake news, we felt coffee aficionados deserved to know where the origin of “Cup
of Joe” came from. As usual, we turned
to Snopes.com
to answer [click here for
more on Snopes.] To our surprise Cup of
Joe is a relatively new term in comparison with the centuries that coffee has
been consumed by fellow humans.
GUEST BLOG / By the staff of Snopes.com--While those of the Starbucks generation may almost
think they discovered the drink, coffee, that enticing hot brew, has been part
of everyday experience in Western society for a number of generations. It has
fueled the productivity of countless offices and imparted warm comfort to
innumerable half-frozen G.I.s, and it’s been the prominent beverage in
multitudinous housewifely gatherings (coffee klatches) and Alcoholics Anonymous
meetings.
Over its history of
popularity in Western culture coffee has attracted affectionate nicknames such
as “java” and “joe,” and it is the latter which concerns us, because unlike the
origins of the term “java,” how the beverage came to bear the appellation of
“joe” is still a bit of a mystery. (We colloquially term coffee “java” because
at the time the beverage became popular in the 19th century, the primary source
of the world’s coffee was the island of Java in Indonesia.)
Example:
Where does the term “cup of
Joe” (coffee) come from?
I think the strongest
explanation heard so far is:
-->
Editorial cartoons dubbed Daniels “Sir
Josephus, Admiral of the USS Grapejuice Pinafore” who oversaw a fleet of Navy
ships with names such as “USS Piffle” that were bedecked with flowers, rocking
chairs and potted plants. But Daniels’ order was actually just the final phase
of a long process that had been slowly reducing the presence of alcohol on Navy
ships. General Order #99 was enacted in
1914 and is still Naval law, a law that so far has outlasted Prohibition
(1920-1934).
“Josephus Daniels (18 May 1862-15 January 1948) was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Among his reforms of the Navy were inaugurating the practice of making 100 Sailors from the Fleet eligible for entrance into the Naval Academy, the introduction of women into the service, and the abolishment of the officers’ wine mess. From that time on, the strongest drink aboard Navy ships could only be coffee and over the years, a cup of coffee became known as ‘a cup of Joe’.”
One theory ascribes the
nickname to Josephus “Joe” Daniels who, while Secretary of the Navy during
World War I, imposed a general ban upon the serving of alcohol aboard U.S. Navy
ships (albeit with some exceptions for special occasions). His General Order 99
that prohibited alcohol aboard such vessels was issued on 1 June 1914. By the
lights of the Daniels supposition, the loss of easy access to booze aboard
ships led to increased coffee consumption by naval men, who in response
christened their mugs of java “cups of joe” as a sorrowful homage to the man
who had banned their hooch and thus forced them into drinking coffee.
It’s a charming theory, but
it just doesn’t hold up. Prior to 1914, the U.S. Navy had not been sodden with
rum and staffed as far as the eye could see by tipsy sailors barely capable of
remaining on their feet. Rather, the implementation of General Order 99 had
precious little effect on the lives of enlisted sailors, an already heartily
sober lot, because the ships they served on had been officially dry since the
spirit ration was abolished in 1862. Officers, however, were affected because
they had had access to a “wine mess” from 1893 until the 1914 order put a stop
to that.
There are far fewer officers
than there are sailors, thus the impact of General Order 99 would have been
relatively mild, certainly not the stuff of which rueful sobriquets are coined.
Moreover, “cup of joe” was first recorded as entering the English language in
1930, a full 16 years after the grumblings of disgruntled sailing men
supposedly put the term into common parlance. To believe the Josephus Daniels
theory is to believe that across that span of time no one — in the Navy or
outside it — wrote down that term in any newspaper article or letter that has
yet come to light (and guys aboard ships are known for writing letters).
There are two stronger
theories for how “coffee” came to be “joe,” but neither is verifiable. The
first asserts that “joe” is a corruption of one of two other slang words for
coffee: java and jamoke, the latter itself a compression of java and mocha.
Under that theory, a “cup of jamoke” could easily have slip-slid its way into
being a “cup of joe.” People do love to shorten their slang terms, after all.
The second postulates that
since “joe” is argot for a “fellow, guy, chap” (the earliest sighting of its
being used that way dates to 1846), that a “cup of joe” thus means the common
man’s drink. The lexicon of English is replete with instances of “joe” being
used to denote a typical guy who is wholly interchangeable with any other guy
in the same line of work or area of special interest: “G.I. Joe,” “Holy Joe” (a
chaplain or especially sanctimonious person), “Joe College,” “Joe Blow,” and of
course “the average Joe.” “Cup of Joe” therefore would be the stuff that fuels
the common man.
One final theory suggests the
term was sired by an mental association of “black” with “coffee,” with the 1860
Stephen Foster song Old Black Joe putting it all together. Yet the song, the
lynchpin of the theory, makes no mention of coffee. Moreover, would a song that
was hugely popular in 1860 spawn a widespread term that appeared only in 1930?
Of the two best theories,
jamoke morphing into joe is the strongest contender thanks to this find by
linguist Michael Quinion: “It is significant that an early example appears in
1931 in the Reserve Officer’s Manual by a man named Erdman: ‘Jamoke, Java, Joe.
Coffee. Derived from the words Java and Mocha, where originally the best coffee
came from.'”
CUP OF JOE IN POLITICS:
No comments:
Post a Comment