Coffee beans
25 February 2021
Java and joe are American slang terms for coffee. Java has a definitive and straightforward origin, while the origin of joe is a bit mysterious, although we have two very good possibilities, both of which connect to the earlier slang term Java.
That earlier term comes from the name of the island in what is now Indonesia. In the late seventeenth century, Dutch planters imported coffee from Arabia, and by the mid eighteenth century Java coffee was being drunk in Britain and Europe. From the 1759 Chemical Works of Caspar Neumann:
Three sorts of Coffee are distinguished in trade; Arabian or Levant, East-Indian or Java, and West-Indian or Surinam Coffee.
And we have this discussion of the Dutch trade in coffee in Adam Anderson’s 1764 An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce:
About the Year 1690, the Dutch began to plant it at Batavia, in the Island of Java: And in 1719 it was first imported thence into Holland. Since the Dutch have planted a great Deal of Coffee in Ceylon as well as in Java. Insomuch that, Anno 1743, they imported into Holland 3,555,877 Pound Weight of from Java, and at same Time but 12,368 Pounds from Mocha: So greatly had they improved their Java Coffee.
I was only a matter of time before Java coffee was clipped to simply Java. From the 1805 Commercial Secretary, a book of examples of correspondence for those wishing to learn about conducting international trade. The reference here is to coffee from Java:
The goods are arrived; the quality of the sugar is pretty good, but we cannot say the same of the coffee. The Java is of a very ordinary sort indeed. By the same ship we have received some Java from another house in your place, equally good, and three shillings lower.
But Java would generalize to mean coffee of any type. In Lewis Garrard’s 1850 account of his travels through the American west, he refers to Java several times. We cannot be sure he didn’t specifically mean coffee from Java, but he probably didn’t:
The visits of the Indians were divided between Mr. Bent's lodge, and our own; but we saw as many as we wished, for our coffee and sugar cost us a dollar a pound. To secure the good will and robes of the sensitive men, we had to offer our dear-bought Java at meal time—the period of the greatest congregation. Still, their company was acceptable, as their manners, conversation, and pipes, were agreeable.
But Jack Black in his 1926 autobiography You Can’t Win, unambiguously uses Java to mean coffee of any type, as in this case where the tramps he is sleeping rough with would clearly not be discriminating about their choice of coffee beans when they have no food to eat:
We went back to the fire and discussed breakfast. “Nothing but Java,” said the bum that had the coffee.
"I'll go to the farmhouse," I volunteered, "and buy something."
"Nix, nix," said one; "buy nothin'," said the other, "it's you kind of cats that make it tough on us, buyin' chuck. They begin to expect money. You go up to that house," pointing to a place on a small rise, about fifteen minutes' walk, "and tell the woman you and two other kids run away from home in the city three days ago and you ain't had nothin' but a head of cabbage that fell off a farmer's wagon between youse since you left. Tell her you are on your way back home and the other two kids are down by the bridge so hungry they can't walk. On your way up there git a phony name and street number ready in case she asks you questions. She'll give you a sit-down for yourself, chances are, but bring back a 'lump' for us.”
Joe, on the other hand, appears in the early years of the twentieth century. There are two leading explanations for the slang term. The first explanation is that joe is a clipping of jamocha or jamoke, itself a blend of Java and Mocha. (Today, we know mocha as a mix of coffee and chocolate, but the term originally referred to coffee from Mocha or al-Makha in what is now Yemen.) An article in the Atlanta Constitution from 17 July 1899 places jamoca as one of several diner slang terms:
If one sat down to the table and ordered chops and eggs the order went to the cook as: “A stack of reds and two in the air,” and while lost in wonderment and vainly endeavoring to find out what he meant, down would come the dishes with a meal equal to anything at the big hotels.
“A dozen in the grease: meant fried oysters; “one jamoca” was for a cup of coffee; “pompano for fifty,” which would undoubtedly cause you to clutch your purse and run, meant simply a half-dollar order of fish; “pork and—,” translated was, “bring beans on the side,” while “ham and—straight up” gave the patron ham with eggs that were soft on top.
And a grocery ad in the New York Daily Tribune of 28 August 1899 advertises a “Jamoka Blend,” obviously a mix of beans from Java and al-Makha.
An “Oscar und Adolf” cartoon: the title characters are running a restaurant and Osgar, the waiter, gives the orders to the cook, Adolf, via a music box, where a particular song selection means a particular dish; in this musical code, Stephen Foster’s “Old Black Joe” means coffee without cream.
The second explanation is that it is taken from an old, Stephen Foster song from 1860, “Old Black Joe.” The song is about a slave named Joe and has absolutely nothing to do with coffee, but the black, according to the hypothesis, refers to black coffee, and the < j > was shared with the earlier Java. We see this connection in an Osgar und Adolf cartoon of 27 February 1911 where the two title characters are running a restaurant, and Osgar communicates the customer’s orders to Adolf in the kitchen via a music box:
Diss moosik box shoult make you der order plain, Adolf. For instance ven id plays “Old Black Joe” id means coffee mitoudt cream—“Bring Me a Rose” means Limberger cheece—und “Come Under My Plaidie” means oatmeal porridge.
Not only does the cartoon connect the slang term to the Stephen Foster song, but it also shows that joe was established slang by 1911; otherwise, that line in the cartoon would not have made sense. But whether the song was an inspiration for the slang term or an after-the-fact connection is not known.
An incorrect explanation that is often given is that joe originated in U.S. Navy slang in reference to the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who banned alcohol on U.S. Navy ships in 1914. The story goes that coffee was substituted for the traditional rum, and the sailors took to calling coffee joe in retaliation. A neat story, but as we’ve seen, the slang term was already in existence when Daniels dried out the Navy.
Sources:
Anderson, Adam. An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, vol. 2 of 2. London: A. Millar, 1764, 88. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Black, Jack. You Can’t Win. New York: Macmillan, 1926, 67. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
The Commercial Secretary (Le Secrétaire du Commerce). Paris: Chez Saintin, 1805, 30.
Condo. “Osgar und Adolf” (cartoon). Tacoma Times (Washington), 27 February 1911, 4. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.
Display Ad. New York Daily Tribune, 28 August 1899, 12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Garrard, Lewis. Wah-To-Yah, and the Taos Trail. Cincinnati: H.W. Derby, 1850, 62. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2021, s.v. java, n., joe, n.4., jamoke, n.1.
Lewis, William. The Chemical Works of Caspar Neumann. London: W. Johnston, 1759, 378. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2011, s.v. Java, n.; second edition, 1989, s.v. joe, n.3.
“Story of a Queer Cafe in New York.” Atlanta Constitution, 17 July 1899, 5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Photo credit: Robert Knapp, 2010. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.