Where did the old term of calling a cup of coffee a "cup of joe" come from?!
Where did the old term of calling a cup of coffee a "cup of joe" come from?
Answers:
The most boring, but most probable, suggestion is that it is a modification of java or jamoke for coffee, perhaps under the influence of one or other of the many expressions at the time that contained the word Joe — for example, “an ordinary Joe” (though “GI Joe” for an enlisted man in the US military is from the next decade). 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”.