barista
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of barista
First recorded in 1980–85; from Italian: “bartender,” from bar bar 1 ( def. ) (a loanword from English) + Italian -ista -ist ( def. )
Explanation
A barista is a café employee who specializes in coffee drinks, especially espresso. The person who makes your half-caf vanilla caramel latte is a barista. In Italy, a barista is a "bartender serving coffee drinks, alcoholic drinks, and snacks." The word was adopted by English-speakers around 1992, at the start of the craze for espresso bars and cafés outside of Italy. If a restaurant only serves drip coffee, the person making it isn't called a barista. An espresso machine, on the other hand, requires a barista. If your specialty coffee drink is always delicious and served with a smile, be sure to tip your barista!
Vocabulary lists containing barista
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
With our Barista product in particular, it took us 18 months to get it right.
From Salon • Dec. 15, 2024
Both have won an annual tournament for competitive coffee-making that made them United States Barista Champions.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 6, 2023
At the 2022 World Barista Championships in Melbourne, Morgan Eckroth of Onyx Coffee guided a tower of coffee grinds out from under the mammoth grinder as she prepared to pull a shot of espresso.
From Slate • Jan. 11, 2023
The process garnered serious attention after Finnish barista Kaapo Paavolainen of Helsinki’s One Day Coffee brewed the unconventional koji beans in public for the first time at the World Barista Championship in Milan in October.
From Seattle Times • Jul. 11, 2022
But the ASA said the ad was misleading because Oatly based the claim on comparing one of its products, Oatly Barista Edition, with full cream milk.
From BBC • Jan. 26, 2022
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
