coffee can
6
1.0
- noun
- /ˈkɔːfi kæn/
:
lata de café
- A ten-by-twelve shop of canned food, flour bags, coffee cans, biscuit tins, and a salt pork barrel.
She grows all of her own food in coffee cans, so she grows little tomato plants.
- She grows all of her own food in coffee cans, so she grows little tomato plants.
Examples
-
Walter is carrying a bright red coffee can with a blue plastic lid.
Fiction book (1998) -
I keep a coffee can filled with soapy water, and I hunt Japanese beetles.
Fiction book (1995) -
Next door, a young woman came out of the house with an empty coffee can in her hand.
Fiction book (1991) -
Some dropped a dollar into a donation coffee can on the buffet.
Fiction book (1998) -
He and my grandma save money in a coffee can in their basement to send my dad to a two year Community College.
-
Libby handed her two dollar bills, and the woman reached into a red coffee can to retrieve the change.
Fiction book (1996) -
She grows all of her own food in coffee cans, so she grows little tomato plants.
-
Jody pulled a nightcrawler from the coffee can and threaded it on her hook.
Fiction book (1995) -
Some of the plots were ornamented with bits of ribbon, chrysanthemums in coffee cans, or artificial geraniums.
Fiction book (1995) -
He stored the leftover coffee in a coffee can to keep it fresh.
Synonyms
491
1.0
A sealed metal container for food or drink
113
1.0
A metal container for keeping food or small things
46
2.0
A metal container for keeping dry food like tea or flour
7
1.0
A small metal container for keeping food or drink
1
3.5
A metal container for keeping dry foods like tea or flour
How Big
6
1.0
432
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a container for storing ground coffee' is directly and compositionally derived from the constituents 'coffee' + 'can' (noun+noun compound indicating the type of container). This straightforward compounding pattern is common cross-linguistically and would be obvious to a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
The noun coffee can comes from the metal tins that used to hold ground coffee, and people kept the small metal can and used it again for other things. So today coffee can means that kind of simple tin 'container' for coffee and often for 'storing' other items.