Word.ws English Dictionary

café royale

café royale noun: coffee with brandy, sometimes served with spices, cream, etc.; (countable) a serving of this beverage.

Noun

café royale (countable and uncountable)

  1. (uncountable) Coffee with brandy, sometimes served with spices, cream, etc.; (countable) a serving of this beverage.
    • Come here and sit down. Have a cigar and a café royale.1890 November 23, “What Is the Remedy?”, in The New York Times, volume XL, number 21,243, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 30 Jan 2026, page 11...
    • Café royale was also a favourite beverage with them—a cup of strong black coffee with brandy, the latter being bought separate in a bottle. The coffee could be doctored to any degree of strength. At first, my shipmates would take one portion of brandy, a swallow of café royale, and in would go...1902, Stanley Waterloo (indicated as editor), “A Glimpse of the Mediterranean”, in The Story of a Strange Career, Being the Autobiography of a Convict: An Authentic Document, New York, N.Y.: D....

Examples of café royale in a sentence

  • Café royale was also a favourite beverage with them—a cup of strong black coffee with brandy, the latter being bought separate in a bottle.1902, Stanley Waterloo (indicated as editor), “A Glimpse of the Mediterranean”, in The Story of a Strange Career, Being the Autobiography...
  • We had a café royale—with Lanagan pouring his thimble-full of cognac in my glass—and Morton left.1913, Edward H. Hurlbut, “The Conspiracy of One”, in Lanagan, Amateur Detective, New York, N.Y.: Sturgis & Walton Company, page 73:
  • Like to drop over and have a café royale?”1928 May 15, Thomson Burtis, “Misfortune Hunters: A New Novelette of the Border Air Patrol”, in Anthony M[elville] Rud, editor, Adventure...
  • He followed this with a thick and tender small steak, soufflé potatoes, asparagus hollandaise, a tossed green salad and zabaglione, along with a café royale for a finisher.1951 September, Sam Merwin, Jr., “House of Many Worlds”, in Startling Stories, volume 24, number 1, Kokomo, Ind.: Better Publications...

Forms of café royale

alternative formcafe royale

Origin of café royale

Pseudo-Gallicism (formed within English), from café (“coffee”), with postpositive (as usual in French) royale f, royal m (“royal”). Although café is masculine, the feminine form royale is used.

Questions about café royale

What does café royale mean?
Café royale means coffee with brandy, sometimes served with spices, cream, etc.; (countable) a serving of this beverage.
How do you use café royale in a sentence?
Café royale was also a favourite beverage with them—a cup of strong black coffee with brandy, the latter being bought separate in a bottle.
What part of speech is café royale?
Café royale is a noun.

Words near café royale in the dictionary

  1. café noir
  2. café noirs
  3. café noisette
  4. café revolutionaries
  5. café revolutionary
  6. café royale
  7. café societies
  8. café society
  9. café terrace
  10. café terraces
  11. café wall illusion

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: café royale (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “café royale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/caf%C3%A9_royale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.