Barista

[Morbius]

I was a little surprised that barista was classified as a rare word in yesterday's standard puzzle.  Given the popularity of coffee culture these days, I'd have thought that most people would have heard of it.  Having said that, only about 25% of players got it, though I wonder how many of the 75% who didn't get it know the word but just didn't see it.  I don't know - is it as common to others as it is to me? 

[Ozzyjack]

Apparently this was accepted as a legitimate word by Alan in 2008

Yes, undoubtedly barista should be allowed, Binkie. It is listed in some of the most recently-published English dictionaries. Its absence from a lot of other dictionaries is explained by its rapid increase in usage over the last few years. Usage examples in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) are as follows:

1995-99:	3
2000-04:	9
2005-07:	35

While most Italian words ending in a are feminine, barista can denote either a female (la barista) or male (il barista). There have been some attempts in the English-speaking world to introduce a word baristo for a male coffee dude. This seems to be a misguided effort, linguistically, and in any case has had little success.

The unisex character of the Italian word is because it is regarded as foreign-derived. And the foreign language it comes from is ... English! It is derived from our word bar, and is an Italianized way of saying "bartender" (US English) or "barman" / "barmaid" (British and Australian English). However the Italian connotations of this are different, because a bar in Italy is a place where coffee and alcohol and all sorts of other refreshments are served.

Barista came into English to name the coffee-related aspects of the Italian barista. I think it has come to be used especially of a person who is skilled at making coffees professionally with an espresso machine, whether they do so in a coffee bar, restaurant, hotel or wherever. So the relationship between the English words bar and barista is a tenuous one.

Some people use the Italian baristi for the plural, but baristas is the normal form in English, and of course is not eligible to be a Chihuahua word under our plurals policy.

I only become aware of the word in the last several years, say 3, but now it occurs with almost annoying frequency in coffee articles, employment ads and even Macca's boasts of Barista made coffee.  When Alan gets the time, I believe a review would be in order.

Interesting fact: One of Anonsi's first jobs was as a barista in a coffee shop.

[Alan W]

I was a little surprised that barista was classified as a rare word in yesterday's standard puzzle.  Given the popularity of coffee culture these days, I'd have thought that most people would have heard of it...

I'm always a bit surprised when long-time forumites express themselves surprised when a word's status is not in keeping with its usage "these days". It's as if people imagine there's a big staff of media monitors here at Chihuahua HQ, continually updating the word list to reflect the latest shifts in the global zeitgeist. Let me remind you, dear forumites, media monitoring is your job.

In the almost ten years since the word first came into Chi it has become much more widely used, so it may well be due for a change. Now that the question's been raised, I'll have a look at that in due course.

[Morbius]

Fair point, Alan.  I think we forumites enthusiastically accept the challenge of keeping the Chi lexicon up-to-date!

While people are certainly more familiar with the word barista than was the case ten years ago, not everyone gets it right.  I recently reviewed the CV of a student who was applying for an internship.  She had a part-time job in a coffee shop as a 'barrister'.  It might have been credible had she been a law student. 

[TRex]

Hmmm....... after mulling it over, I'm still not convinced barista is all that common.

[cmh]

In the UK one of the large coffee chains puts new staff in T shirts with "Trainee Barista" printed on them and I expect that this is one of the reasons that some people now think it is quite a common word.

[birdy]

I'm in a city with at least four five Starbucks within a 12-minute walk, so I'm very familiar with the word.  I would much prefer having some other choices for decent coffee even if I had to use the word barista.