Meanings
- alternativeAlternative form of café au lait.
We stopped for coffee au lait near the old French Market, took a walk out to the levee and then back to the Court of the Three Sisters to sit out under the trees, drink beer and talk fencing until the moon began to yawn.
1940 October, Dernell Every, “The Editor Goes Roaming: Fencing in New Orleans, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and Portland”, in Dernell Every, editor, The Riposte, volume 5, number 5 (number 58 overall), New York, N.Y.: [s.n.], →OCLC, page 3, column 2
comparative more coffee au lait · superlative most coffee au lait
- alternativeAlternative form of café au lait.
She slept deeply awhile, then was restlessly awake for hours; and slept again in the early morning before Dubin awoke. He left her lying on her stomach, wound in a sheer nightgown, the coffee au lait birthmark on her buttock a blemished island, visible when it was too hot for sheet or blanket.
1979, Bernard Malamud, chapter 1, in Dubin’s Lives, New York, N.Y.: Farrar Straus Giroux, →ISBN, page 15
Origin
Partial calque of French café au lait.
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Rhymes with coffee au lait
All rhymes →Cite this entry
coffee au lait. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coffee%20au%20lait
“coffee au lait.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coffee%20au%20lait. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “coffee au lait,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/coffee%20au%20lait.
Source: coffee au lait on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.