latte
Plurallattes
- 1A coffee drink of espresso and steamed milk, generally topped with a layer of foam.
The barista poured a delicate heart design into the foam of my latte.
Lattes have become the default order at most specialty coffee shops.
Note
English borrowed only half of Italian caffè latte, "coffee milk." The half it kept, the word English uses for the drink, is simply "milk" in Italian, from Latin lac, lactis. It works as a count noun, as in two lattes or high-priced lattes, and as a mass noun, as in Jayne Ann Krentz's "two cups of latte" in Sweet Fortune (1991).
- 2A milky drink made like the coffee version, but with the espresso replaced by a flavoring such as chai, maté, or matcha.
The shop's matcha latte sells out faster than anything else on the menu.
He switched to oat-milk chai lattes after cutting out caffeine.
Note
Here the milk stays and the espresso goes. The replacement flavoring is named first (matcha latte, chai latte), and latte signals only a milky drink. Because the Italian word means "milk" all along, a story told under the coffee drink, the extension is less of a stretch than it looks. Without a modifier, the word still points to coffee.
- 3Left-leaning political attitudes seen as belonging to affluent, comfortable people rather than the working class.
Opponents painted the candidate's platform as latte, long on ideals and short on factory-floor concerns.
The editorial mocked the conference as a weekend festival of latte.
Note
A political jab, not a drink, and it usually sits in front of another noun: latte liberal, latte liberalism. The insult links comfortable spending with left-wing views, and added detail sharpens it. In 2014 Newt Gingrich accused New York mayor Bill De Blasio of "small soy latte liberalism." Treat it as informal and mocking rather than neutral description.
- 4LA-tee/ˈlæti/A stone column crowned with a hemispherical capstone, flat side up, on which the ancient Chamorro raised their buildings; today it is an emblem of Chamorro identity.
Archaeologists mapped a cluster of latte marking an old Chamorro settlement.
The island's flag features a latte as a symbol of native heritage.
Note
A separate word that happens to share the spelling. It has its own origin and no link to the Italian for milk. Each structure pairs a tapering shaft, the haligi, with a hemispherical capstone, the tasa, which rests flat side up. The terms belong to the archaeology and heritage of the Mariana Islands, not to the café.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of latte apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
A shortening of "caffè latte," from Italian caffè ("coffee") plus latte ("milk"), the latter from Latin lac, lactis.