coffee klatch

plural coffee klatches · alternative coffee klatsch · alternative coffee-klatch · alternative coffee-klatsch

1. A social gathering for conversation while drinking coffee.

   Coffee also connects me to my girlfriends. You may think of a coffee klatch as old-fashioned or outmoded, a bunch of housewives gossiping in a suburban breakfast nook, but a klatch is what you make it.

   2005 April, Amanda Boyd, “Klatching Up: Getting together over Coffee in a Whole New Way”, in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Oh.: Cincinnati Monthly Pub. Co., →OCLC, page 28

   5 more examples

   Recently, on a wintry Sunday, some 2,500 white Chicago area residents embarked on a strange safari across the city, determined to do what most of them had never done before—visit a Negro home. Eager to purge themselves of ignorance about the city's "other half," they were participants in Interracial Home Visit Day, a "Coffee Klatsch" co-sponsored by local Catholic, Jewish and Protestant groups in an effort to eliminate racial bigotry and hate.

   1963 April, “Anti-bias Coffee Klatsch: Windy City Interfaith Project Fights Bigotry with Coffee, Cookies and Conversation”, in Ebony, volume XVIII, number 6, Chicago, Ill.: Johnson Publishing Company, →ISSN, page 67

   Gossip seems to manifest itself in its purest form in the coffee-klatsch. From everyday experience a coffee-klatsch is typically a circle of acquaintances who—either in a café or at home in a living room—gather for coffee and cake and unburdened by pressing obligations, turn their attention to one thing: the discussion of the flaws and actions of their absent acquaintances and endless talk about things that do not concern them.

   1971, Jörg R. Bergmann with John Bednarz, Jr., and Eva Kafka Barron, transls., “The Gossip Sequence: The Social Embeddedness of Gossip”, in Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip, Hawthorne, N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter, →ISBN

   A coffee klatch (or klatsch) is a small, informal discussion with a group of people in a private home, usually with light refreshments. Originally the term simply meant people getting together for coffee and conversation. But for public participation purposes, a coffee klatch is more like the coffees scheduled by politicians during a campaign. There is usually a short presentation, followed by questions, answers, and discussion. The fact that a coffee klatch is held in a private home changes the dynamic considerably from a public meeting, as participants are usually on their best behavior because they are guests in a home. […] Because the number of people who can meet in a private home is limited, you may need to hold a series of coffee klatches to reach more people.

   2005, James L. Creighton, The Public Participation Handbook: Making Better Decisions through Citizen Involvement, San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, →ISBN, page 107

   Some sources suggest that coffee klatch was coined by husbands who, expressing their inherent displeasure of being excluded from the inner female coffee sanctum, used the term as a disparaging reference to their coffee-drinking wives. In the postwar baby boom years of American suburbia, the coffee klatch served as a means for the stay-at-home mother and nonworking married woman to build relationships and communicate with other women, thus easing the sense of isolation for some. The term may have returned along with GIs formerly stationed in Europe. German immigrants seeking the familiar continued to practice the custom by inviting their newfound neighbors.

   2008, Melitta Weiss Adamson, Francine Segan, editors, Entertaining from Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl: An Encyclopedia, volumes I (A–G), Westport, Conn.; London: Greenwood Press, →ISBN, page 172

   [I]f a person was to talk about an issue one way in her morning coffee klatch and yet another way in response to a telephone interviewer later in the day, which one is her real opinion? Both are real and both have importance.

   2016, Katherine J[ean] Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN

   Synonyms: coffee morning, kaffeeklatsch

present singular third person coffee klatches · participle present coffee klatching · participle past coffee klatched · past coffee klatched · alternative coffee klatsch · alternative coffee-klatch · alternative coffee-klatsch

1. informalintransitiveTo meet to gossip with friends, often over coffee.

   The upshot of this incessant meeting and dining and coffee klatching is that women are in great demand.

   2009, Patrick Fanning, Not Dead Yet: …and One or Two Other Good Things About Retirement, New Harbinger Publications, →ISBN, page 76

   1 more example

   Hotel workers were busy setting up for morning meetings and men and women in business suits sat coffee-klatching in various corners of the floor.

   2013, Lori Bryant-Woolridge, Read Between the Lies, Doubleday, →ISBN