Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 00:14:57 EST
From: Bapopik Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM
Subject: Java
Java is the name for coffee and also, of course, a computer language.
OED and the RHHDAS both have citations to 1850.
This nice article on coffee is from the Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 10
April 1841, pg. 2, col. 1:
BAD COFFEE.--We advise families to burn their own coffee; jast as the
"Men of Nerve," so funnily represented by Power, advises his hostess to lay
her own eggs. Coffee roasters, who sell coffee already prepared for boiling,
are found in all of the great cities; and, according to New York papers, those
of Gotham cut some queer capers. As we are far in advance of Gotham in modern
banking, for Gotham sticks to the old practice of paying on demand, who knows
but we may be in advance of her in coffee roasting? If we do beat them in
that, we really do a tall business; and we therefore advise our coffee
drinkers to look out, lest they be compelled, when they least expect it, to
cast up their accounts. In Gotham the roasters buy up all the damaged coffee,
mix it with two or three hundred per cent of peas, beans, baked potatoes, and
other _proxies_, roast and grind the _compound_, and sell it for old Java,
best Brazil, prime St. Domingo, and even Mocha. In all coffee countries, the
refuse, consisting of what is broken by the hulling mills, or what is
defective in growth, eaten by insects, or otherwise damaged, is separated from
the _merchantable_ qualities, and sold under the name of _triage_. This
trash, whenever brought into our ports, is bought by the coffee roasters.
Besides this, they buy all the coffee damaged by salt water or otherwise. Let
coffee drinkers imagine what prime Mocha they have from Brazil _triage_,
damaged Havana, peas, beans, and dried potatoes. Buy your own coffee, and
roast it at home. Besides, coffee is best when made immediately after
roasting.
We now have Starbucks on every block in "Gotham," so all that's obviously
changed.