Espresso

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Finny Phillip.

Finny Phillip. And Finny, where are you calling from?

I’m calling from Dallas.

Oh, okay, great. What’s up?

I have a friend who’s a coffee sommelier, and he was reading something I’d written about espresso, and I defined espresso to mean express in Italian. And he said that that was wrong, and that espresso really means to pull. And this sort of stemmed from the idea that the original espresso machines were like a manual pull and that you pull a shot. And then I went around for a while and it just kind of died down. We had this sort of gentlemanly exchange and decided to agree to disagree. And then I went to two Italian friends and asked them what it means. And they thought it was pretty preposterous that it would mean to pull. And so I went back and talked to him, and he went to a few etymology things and told me that it means to pull. So now we’re sort of at this impasse, and I think we both have about an equal amount of resources saying it’s one or the other. So I decided to appeal to the Supreme Court of Etymology, you guys.

The Supreme Court of Etymology. You should see us in black. We look great. And my powder wig itches, though. Grant, your little collar, it’s got a stain on it. It’s got a coffee stain on it.

So, Finny, my question for you is, what do you mean when you say that it means express?

Well, an espresso shot should only take 30 seconds or under 30 seconds, whereas most coffee brewing methods, you’re looking at at least four minutes. And so it’s supposed to be fast. The whole idea of espresso is just to get in and out, and that’s why it was created, is just to get you some fast coffee.

All right, so let’s get to the bottom of this. You’re both wrong.

Okay.

The Supreme Court Chief Justice has spoken. So he owes you coffee, and you’ve got to write a nice biography of him or something. I don’t know what.

All right. Espresso in English comes is a shortened form of cafe espresso, which means literally pressed out coffee. It’s literally being pressed out of the machine. Whether it’s under high pressure or this lever or what have you, it’s being pressed out of the machine. Express can mean pressed out in English, which is why I wanted clarification from you when you said that it means express, because you can express air, say, from an inner tube in English, or any breastfeeding mother will talk about expressing milk from her breast, right? It’s the same thing, forcing out something from another thing. But it’s not a very common use of express in English. In any case, espresso, the coffee, does not come from and does not have anything to do with speed. And it’s a common misconception, and it partly feeds into why people misspell it as expresso, which is wrong.

Yeah. And in fact, express, interestingly enough, is older than the coffee in English, and it comes from railroads. Because we have another express still in English, and this express is… Tell me if this line is familiar to you. Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited. We’ve all heard that so many times. And that express is about stipulated or specified or said directly.

Right. It’s like something expressly forbidden.

Right. Well, expressly for a purpose, right?

Yeah. And so when you had an express train originally, it wasn’t that it was fast.

Yeah. It did it skipped all the stops.

Yeah, yeah. It went direct. It was specifically for a single destination. And then because it is faster than the local, the idea of speed or being hurried kind of overtook this idea that it was for a single destination. And express took on this meaning to say, now it’s about speed. And that’s how we think of express today. All express basically today just means, oh, you know, it’s going to be faster than the other alternative. And there are advantages to taking the express that are about speed and time.

Right. And it’d be understandable that you would think that an espresso coffee is so named. It is faster.

Yeah, it’s fast. But the name doesn’t have anything to do with that speed.

Right. All right?

All right. But what’s going to blow your mind is that even though we have all these different meanings of express, they all come the same original Latin. They just came to us by different paths. So some came through railroading, some came from French food service, some came from legal documents, just different kind of domains, and they each brought their own strength to their own particular meaning of the word express.

Yeah, and the earliest Latin word means to press out.

To press out. You know what? I’m actually going to have to give it to my friend because he did bring up that argument once to press something out.

Oh, he did. I don’t understand why he got the pull from it. I don’t even know of any source that has pulled. I guess it was the action, the original action of pulling the shot, pulling the piston down, creating pressure.

So is he a good coffee maker? Does he do a good coffee?

Absolutely.

Yeah?

Yeah. Well, that’s a plus. So you can sit down and have a latte and talk about this like a gentleman, not an espresso.

All right. A double Americano or something. Just stay away from the espresso. Too much caffeine in your diet probably led to this argument in the first place.

Yeah, yeah. Then you’re really expressing, right? I’ll get you talking.

Thanks for calling. I really appreciate it.

Thanks a lot, Kenny.

All right. Bye-bye.

All right. Bye-bye.

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