espresso shop
- noun
- /ɛˈsprɛsoʊ ʃɑp/
:
cafetería de espresso
- She enjoys meeting friends at the cozy espresso shop by the park to catch up over coffee.
Examples
-
Espresso shops have grown up among the Indian souvenir stores and fast food restaurants.
Academic text (1996) -
They parked and walked together up Hanover Street, the aorta of the North End, past new espresso shops and restaurants.
Fiction book (1992) -
On weekends, I love to relax at my local espresso shop while reading a book.
-
The new espresso shop in town offers a variety of coffee drinks and tasty pastries.
Synonyms
206
1.0
A small place that serves coffee, drinks, and light food
156
1.0
A small cafe where people buy coffee and light food
25
1.0
A small place where people drink coffee and eat light food
5
1.3
A small café where people buy coffee and light snacks
How Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a café specializing in espresso' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'espresso' (a type of coffee) with 'shop' (a place that sells goods/services), following a common English compound pattern like 'coffee shop' or 'bookshop'. This compositional, noun+noun/shop pattern is cross-linguistically frequent, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Espresso shop comes from the Italian coffee word espresso and the word shop. One popular story says espresso means 'pressed out' because hot water is forced through coffee to press the strong flavour out quickly, and a shop that makes and sells this coffee became an espresso shop, so the name means 'a place for quick, strong coffee'.