Word.ws English Dictionary

cup of joe

cup of joe noun: a cup of coffee.

cup of joe: a cup of coffee
Image: Julius Schorzman, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

cup of joe (plural cups of joe)

  1. (US, idiomatic) A cup of coffee.
    • Pike Place is Starbucks' attempt to address complaints that its regular cup of joe is bitter, overroasted and "burnt."2008 April 9, James Poniewozik, “Starbucks' New Brew: A First Taste”, in Time
    Synonyms:
    cup of tea
  2. (figuratively, idiomatic) One’s personal preference.

Synonyms of cup of joe

Forms of cup of joe

pluralcups of joe
alternative formcup o' joe
alternative formcuppa joe

Origin of cup of joe

Uncertain. * Possibly a shortening of "cup of jamoke", from java + mocha: this origin was given in a military officer's manual from 1931, around when the term first appeared. * Alternatively, perhaps a use of joe (“fellow, guy”), signifying that coffee was the drink of the common man. * Another theory suggests that US soldiers in World War I (1914-1918) referred to a serving of instant coffee made by the G. Washington Coffee Refining Company (founded in 1910) as a "cup of George", and that the common abbreviation of the name "George" ("Geo.") was then read as "Joe". * Another theory derives the term from Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), the Secretary of the U.S. Navy who abolished the officers' wine mess and thus made coffee the strongest drink available on ships. Snopes considers this unlikely because it says there is no attestation of the phrase "cup of joe" until 1930, 16 years after the 1914 order banning the wine mess. Confusingly, some other sources consider the Daniels derivation unlikely for the opposite reason: they say "cup of joe" predates the order.

Questions about cup of joe

What does cup of joe mean?
Cup of joe means a cup of coffee.
What part of speech is cup of joe?
Cup of joe is a noun.
What is the plural of cup of joe?
The plural of cup of joe is cups of joe.

Words near cup of joe in the dictionary

  1. cup moth
  2. cup moths
  3. cup noodles
  4. cup o' joe
  5. cup of coffee
  6. cup of joe
  7. cup of tea
  8. cup orchid
  9. cup orchids
  10. cup plant
  11. cup plants

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cup of joe (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cup of joe.ogg.

Cite this entry: “cup of joe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cup_of_joe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.