decaf
- noun
- /ˈdiːˌkæf/
- Informal
- After dinner, I prefer to have a decaf so I can sleep better at night.
- decaf coffee
- cup of decaf
- a decaf latte
So I'm a barista and sometimes I give decaf coffee to rude customers.
- So I'm a barista and sometimes I give decaf coffee to rude customers.
- I don't like caffeine though, so do decaf.
- So can do you guys ever make decaf?
- For us, decaf's like our most searched product on the website.
- But in my research, saying that in blind tastings to coffee snobs, the decaf version could often win.
Examples
-
Father and I had instant decaf with cream, no sugar.
Fiction book (1992) -
Bob brought the decaf and white wine.
Fiction book (1996) -
I was only drinking a cup of coffee with breakfast in the morning, maybe a cup of decaf in the afternoon.
-
Maybe you should think about switching to decaf or something.
Fiction book (1991) -
Can I get a decaf mocha to go?
Fiction book (2001) -
I got my coffee decaf so I can go to sleep in an hour 'cause that's what time I'll be.
-
A middle-aged waitress approaches, holding a pot of regular coffee in one hand and decaf in the other.
Fiction book (1996) -
Hi, can I have a medium decaf iced coffee, butter pecan, extra sugar and cream?
-
The waitress nods and offers me refills, decaf or regular, a transparent pot in either hand.
Fiction book (1996) -
Can I get a cup of decaf coffee instead of regular, please?
Synonyms
A brand of instant coffee with no caffeine often used to mean any decaffeinated coffee
A coffee with most or all of the caffeine removed
How Caffeinated
Surface Forms
Morphology
decaf = decaffeinated (semi-transparent) = de + caf
The noun is a common clipping of 'decaffeinated', but learners may not fully recover the source form from the shortened shape alone.
Etymology
Decaf is short for de- 'remove' plus the caf part from caffeine, which is the part of coffee that keeps you awake. So decaf means coffee 'without' caffeine or with very little of it.