cuppa

English

Alternative forms

• cupper

Etymology

Contraction of cup of (with “tea” or sometimes “coffee” implied). See also a (“of”), pinta (“pint of milk”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌpə/
• Rhymes: -ʌpə

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

cuppa (plural cuppas)

1. (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, colloquial) A cup of tea (or sometimes any hot drink).

   I’ve just put the kettle on – fancy a cuppa?

   • 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter III:

     […] we covered the hundred yards to the lawn where the tea table awaited us. […] Only Bobbie was present when we arrived at the trough. Wilbert and Phyllis were presumably still in the leafy glade, and Mrs Cream, Bobbie said, worked in her room every afternoon on her new spine-freezer and seldom knocked off for a cuppa.

   • 1992, Machine Knitting Monthly, Maidenhead: Machine Knitting Monthly Ltd.,

     Back home safely, I made a cuppa and sat for a good hour revelling in my favourite magazine.

   • 2007, Kevin Hallewell, Woop Woop, page 35:

     ‘Here,’ said Clancy as he sat up and dangled his legs over the edge of the bed, ‘You sit down and take it easy. I′ll boil the billy for a cuppa’.

   • 2017 Mrs. S. "Guillotines Decide" Orphan Black

     Get Kira up. I'll pour you a cuppa.

2. (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, colloquial) Whatever interests or suits one; one's cup of tea.
   • 2001, Gabrielle Bauer, Waltzing the Tango: Confessions of an Out-of-step Boomer, page 210:

     Similes were not my cuppa, anyway. My classmates tended to overload their writing with them (all-time record: six in one paragraph) and they stuck out like violins in a rock tune.

3. Pronunciation spelling of cup of.
   • 1940, The New Yorker, Volume 16, Part 1, page 22:

     And he orders a cuppa cawfee. “A cuppa cawfee and what else?” I says to him.

   • 1997, Sinclair Lewis, edited by Anthony Di Renzo, Commutation: $9.17: If I Were Boss: The Early Business Stories of Sinclair Lewis:

     I just felt like I wanted another cuppa coffee and I told her so; […] and before I could get just one more cuppa coffee it was seven-fifty!

   • 2008, Frank Deford, The Entitled: A Tale of Modern Baseball, "cuppa"&hl=en&sa=X page 204:

     “That′s a new line, isn′t it? Come up to my suite for a cuppa coffee.”

Derived terms

• cuppa joe

Anagrams

• cap up

Latin

Etymology

Found in Late and Vulgar Latin. From Classical Latin cūpa (“tub, cask, vat”). Possibly influenced by Frankish *kopp (“bowl, vessel”), from Proto-Germanic *kuppaz (“round object, bowl, vessel”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): /ˈkup.pa/, [ˈkʊpːä]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈkup.pa/, [ˈkupːä]

Noun

cuppa f (genitive cuppae); first declension

1. drinking vessel
2. barrel, cask
3. axle
4. bar of an oil press

Declension

First-declension noun.

	singular	plural
nominative	cuppa	cuppae
genitive	cuppae	cuppārum
dative	cuppae	cuppīs
accusative	cuppam	cuppās
ablative	cuppā	cuppīs
vocative	cuppa	cuppae

Descendants

• Eastern Romance:
  • Aromanian: cupã
  • Romanian: cupă
• Italian: coppa
  • → Serbo-Croatian:

    Cyrillic script: ку̏па

    Latin script: kȕpa

• Old French: cope, cupe
  • French: coupe
    • → English: coupe
  • Norman: coupe
• Old Leonese:
  • Asturian: copa
• Old Occitan:
  • Catalan: copa
• Old Galician-Portuguese:
  • Portuguese: copa, copo
    • → Japanese: コップ (koppu)
    • → Kadiwéu: goopa
    • → Swahili: kopo
• Old Spanish: copa
  • Spanish: copa
    • → Basque: kopa
    • → O'odham: ko꞉ba
• Sicilian: cuppa
• Rhaeto-Romance:
  • Friulian: cope
• → Albanian: kupë
• → Ancient Greek: κοῦπα (koûpa)
  • Byzantine Greek: κούπα (koúpa)
    • Greek: κούπα (koúpa)
    • → Aramaic:

      Hebrew script: כובא (kūbā)

      Syriac script: ܟܘܒܐ (kūbā)

      • → Arabic: كُوب (kūb)
        • Hijazi Arabic: كوب (kūb, kōb)
• → Old English: cuppe
  • Middle English: cuppe, coppe
    • English: cup
      • → Farefare: kɔpɩ
      • → Hebrew: קאפ (kap)
      • → Japanese: カップ (kappu)
      • → Kashubian: kopsa (Canada, United States)
      • → Korean: 컵 (keop)
      • → Maori: kapu
    • Scots: cuppe, capp, cap, caup, kap
    • → Middle Irish: cupa
      • Irish: cupa
      • Scottish Gaelic: cupa
  • → Welsh: cwpan
• → Old Irish: cuppán
  • Irish: cupán
• → Old High German: kupfa, kupha, kuppa
  • Middle High German: kupfe
    • German: Kuppe
    • Luxembourgish: Kopp

Many descendants of Proto-Germanic *kuppaz have conflated with this word. See there for more.

References

• cuppa in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)